300 colleagues joined the party
Here is a recap of the spectacular summer event at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science on Thursday 8 June.
Video and photo: Kristofer Fahlgren, Kuskeproductions.com
This Summer event brought together our community for an afternoon with captivating lectures from our research centres, guided lab tours, a mesmerising poster festival, and an abundance of delightful food, drinks and entertainment.
The event kicked off with a series of engaging lectures delivered by our esteemed faculty members. The diverse topics covered included breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, advancements in renewable energy systems, cutting-edge developments in computer science, and much more. The presentations were thought-provoking and showcased our community's depth of knowledge and expertise.
Meanwhile, colleagues could visit six of our labs. Hosted by students, you could see the supercomputer at PDC Center for High Performance Computing, visit space in the Visualization Studio, see the Anechoic Chamber, the Robotic Lab, our Fusion Plasma Device EXTRAP T2R and the Sustainable Power Lab.
Joana and Matti won the poster festival
One of the event's highlights was the poster festival, where doctoral students could showcase their research and projects. Attendees could engage in stimulating discussions with the presenters, fostering intellectual exchange and collaboration across different areas of study. The passion and creativity displayed through the posters truly reflected the innovative spirit of our school.
A carefully selected jury appointed the two best posters based on the three criteria of innovative design, clarity and communication qualities, and accessibility for a broad audience.
The winners each received a 15 000 SEK price travel grant: Joana Fonesca, a doctoral student at the Division of Decision and Control Systems, and Matti Vahs, a doctoral student at the Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning.
Saving your summer bath with algea monotoring
Joana Fonescas’ work Water quality monitoring using underwater robots in the archipelago was one of the winners of the poster festival.
"The poster I presented for this event is very different from the posters I presented previously for conferences and other events. My idea was to create a poster that everyone could understand and still convey a lot of the technological detail of our solution. This meant that the focus was mostly on the problem, the design of the solution, and the tools we used to achieve the solution rather than the math we developed or the implementation details", Joana says.
The jury’s motivation follows: The work presented in this poster will save your summer holidays by the water, monitoring the algae. And diving right into the problem with a well-contextualised innovative design. It also reflects the collaborative effort, even outside our school.
"My conference paper got accepted into Conference on Control Technology and Applications, which will take place in Barbados. I will use the winning contribution to fund my trip there", Joana says.
Preventing drone crashes
Matti Vahs and his work Belief Control Barrier Functions for Risk-aware Control also awarded the price.
“Something that I like to focus on in my research is to provide mathematical guarantees for algorithms useful for real-world robotic scenarios. Such guarantees state that the probability of a drone crashing into a wall should always be less than 0.01%. I believe combining complex theory and effective hardware demonstrations with a drone might have been one of my strengths in the competition,” Matti says.
The jury’s motivation follows: Seeing is believing. This work finds your comfort zone with difficult math and a nice demo. Now everyone can fly a drone without crashing. Communicated using a classic template effectively.
“I hope I can use the travel grant to participate in the International Conference on Robotics and Automation next year which will take place in Yokohama, Japan,” he finishes.
Text: Charlotta Alnersson
Photo: Maria Malmqvist