hp_04_spring_2012 by Nelson Mota

het proefschrift journal for phd candidates at

communication with contributions by Anna Peksa, Eric Mazur, Giselle Ramos, Johan Wolmarans, Jorge Mejia Hernandez, Ken Arroyo Ohori, Marion van Putten, Nelson Mota,Pavel Babal, Regina Tange-Hoffmann, Renske van der Zwaard, Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto, Sylvie Dijkstra-Soudarissanane, Tim Cayford, Wouter van der Wal

Spring, 2012

You too can benefit from the advantages of a digitally printed thesis

Thesis Specialist Low prices and high quality Colorpages randomly in the book Short and flexible delivery times Various finishing methods (e.g. perfect and sewn binding) Hardcover and softcover (e.g. 200 softcover and 5 hardcover) Ran out of books? Re-order for the same price (min. 30 ex.) Groupdiscount arrangements

Loskade 4 7202 CZ Zutphen Tel: 0575 - 585300 Fax: 0575 - 585308 www.wps.nl wps@wps.nl

Also your partner for : - Conference readers - Abstract books - Reports - All book-like products

Editorial

More than a century ago, in 1904, the German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel wrote that living in the metropolis fostered an intensification of nervous stimulation. This condition, the nervenleben, thereby creates a phenomenon where “the nerves find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last possibility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metropolitan life.” This blasé attitude triggers, thus, a devaluation of our worldly experience. The cover of this issue of HP, the famous 1893 painting “The scream” by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, epitomizes an attempt to react against the angst of living in the metropolis. The everyday of a PhD candidate could similarly be portrayed as a continuous nervous stimulation. The intense process of acquiring knowledge, testing it against the judgement of the experts and peers, exercising criticism on the evidences and pursuing insightful but entirely new approaches is definitely nerve breaking! The mortar that brings together all these experiences is communication, which is our theme for this issue. We would like, thus, to bring about a debate on how communication is central to our everyday life. Renske van der Zwaard talks about TU Delft’s initiative “Human Library,” which brings together PhD’s, the university’s Rector Magnificus and other participants in the campus life to engage on a

The Nervenleben. Communication and the intensification of nervous stimulation Nelson Mota N.J.A.Mota@tudelft.nl

conversation where each one is open to learn with the other. Tim Cayford delivers a review on the first “Human Library” event where Sana Amir and Anja Stokkers were the protagonists. Johan Wolmarans points out the challenges to communication in a context such as the TU Delft and he delivers good suggestions on how to avoid confusions and misunderstandings. Regina Tange-Hoffmann shares with us her enthusiasm in providing PhD candidates with tools to improve their communication skills, while further on, she discloses some details on the importance of communication for Giselle Ramos’ research on collecting and analysing traffic information. Wouter van der Wal brings about an interesting comparison between the challenges faced by a post-doc and a professional football player. Shifting our attention from sports to cinema, Jorge Mejia Hernandez reviews Lotte Stoops’ documentary “Grande Hotel”,

Contents

Tim Cayford reports from an energy conference in Groningen, where an improved communication on the seriousness of the energy situation seems to be a central challenge. Professor Eric Mazur, whom has been long advocating the idea of “peer instruction”, also highlights the central importance of good communication for science and education. Marion van Putten succinctly reveals some tips for combining social media with your research and Sylvie Dijkstra-Soudarissanane, Promood’s former president, brings about the role of Promood as a communication facilitator in TU Delft’s PhD community. All these contributions can help us avoiding the blasé attitude fostered by the neverleben of contemporary scientific and academic communities’ everyday life. If sometimes we feel like the face on Munch’s painting, I would certainly hope that such feeling is fostered and motivated, rather, by experiences of joy and happiness.

Cover

Edvard Munch “The Scream” (1893) © Creative Commons

Editorial

Relax Corner

Words from the board

Inside TU

PromooD news

(Un) Confidential report

Opinion

From the other side

What are you doing?

Links

Life Post-Doc

Promood

spring 2012

highlighting its resonance with a belated form of the “exhibitionist strategies” of the post 1968 south-American cinema. Pavel Babal reveals another of TU Delft’s “hidden” and peculiar research facilities, the so-called “Clean Room.”

Words from the board

We as PhDs typically enjoy a limited stay at TU Delft, spending some time at the beginning to get acquainted with the university, and some time at the end struggling to wrap up all the loose ends before the thesis defense. This entails that most PromooD board members are actively involved for a year or two, which means that our board is in continuous rotation. With a new year comes a new PromooD chairman, and this year it is me. Allow me to present myself, I am Ken Arroyo Ohori, a PhD candidate at the OTB Research Institute, the only (formerly) independent research institute in the university. Since no presentation of a PhD would seemingly be complete without talking about his research, I will add that my work is related to higher dimensional Geographic Information Systems. I have taken the position of chairman of PromooD because I sincerely care about the PhD community at the university. I am an academic at heart, but I am very interested in politics and social issues. Thus, I would like to help in continuing to improve the environment and life of us all, academically and not. The PhD community in Delft is something quite special. It is a very heterogeneous group of people, not only from different cultures and working in unrelated fields, but with different interests, plans and outlooks on life. Nevertheless, they are joined by their

PromooD: Times are a Changing Ken Arroyo Ohori G.A.K.ArroyoOhori@tudelft.nl

needs for good facilities and support, and their passion for what they do. Doing a PhD is not for everyone, but it is a genuinely rewarding but surely demanding experience for those who decide to pursue it. Helping with the often intangible aspects of this experience is one of the things PromooD does best. We organize social activities to connect you to your peers and to help with the isolation of being a PhD, we help with the occasional problems that arise during the PhD process, and we act as a common voice at the university and national level. Getting back to the title of this piece, times are definitely changing, but especially so for TU Delft and the Dutch educational system regarding PhDs. We have seen a very large increase in the number of PhDs over the last few years. Never before we have been so many, and therefore things that worked well on an ad hoc basis before, quickly became in need of change. The Graduate School and the Doctoral

Education program are a reflection of this. At the same time, an ever increasing number of PhDs come from other countries and with their own funding. This change in demographics will surely increase international cooperation, and in time, will most definitely change the research profile of the university as well. As future graduates of TU Delft, we are hopeful that these changes are for the better, and I am convinced that the best way to ensure it is so, is to be actively involved in the change process itself. PromooD, as an active organization, has not remained still during these changing times. We have been involved in the Graduate School from the very start, and we have expanded our activities, doing our best to have something for everyone; keeping our favourite events, but never neglecting looking for new opportunities. As the chairman of PromooD, I look forward to guiding the organization through these changing times. In the near future, I will strive to have an even more inclusive and active PromooD, better aware of the needs of PhDs and the issues affecting us, more representative and with an enhanced outreach. PromooD should then emerge as an ever stronger voice for PhDs.

Colophon

hp _ het proefschrift is the journal of PromooD, the independent representative body of the PhD candidates at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). For more information about PromooD: www.promood.tudelft.nl

hp editorial team: President: Ken Arroyo Ohori Editor-in-chief: Nelson Mota Managing Editor: Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto Deputy Editors: Regina Tange-Hoffmann Timothy Cayford Layout and Design: Nelson Mota

colaborators in this issue: Anna Peksa, Eric Mazur, Giselle Ramos, Johan Wolmarans, Jorge Mejia Hernandez, Ken Arroyo Ohori, Marion van Putten, Nelson Mota,Pavel Babal, Regina Tange-Hoffmann, Renske van der Zwaard, Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto, Sylvie Dijkstra-Soudarissanane, Tim Cayford, Wouter van der Wal ÂŠ Promood and the authors of the articles April 2012 Circulation: 2200 copies

het proefschrift

PromooD News

events, facts, membership, ...

Social integration. This term is dapperly defined in the literature in many different ways, and describes a process that brings people together in various settings to maintain significant social interactions. Although in reality it is a sensed level of her or his “fitting” into the environment. The most important thing that should be fulfilled in this social process is ensuring people that they do not only live, and are surrounded by the community, but as well they do belong to it. Additionally, the community should influence the life quality of individuals in a positive way. Together with the above definitions, the following question arises: how does it work in our TU Delft environment? Does it work, or not? The answer is one: even though, enormous potential of leisure and recreation is available for improving social integration, that potential is not always fully exploited in the lives of PhD students.

Social Integration: Does it Exist or is it a Problem? Anna Peksa A.E.Peksa@tudelft.nl

The existence of the gap between the possible potential and actuality, leads to the conclusion that the needs and the viewpoint of individuals have not been taken into account. The social problems are socially constructed, so the solution has to exist. Here the role of PromooD appears to enhance social integration and development. PromooD tries to encourage PhD students by organizing some social activities to meet with other people who do the same, and cope with

similar problems. During the last year we implemented an after work, monthly gathering of PhD student of TU Delft - VrijMiBo (VrijdagMiddagBorrel). This is being held every last Friday of the month in the Jazz Cafe Bebop. As well, we managed to take our members to the cinema and to play an exciting bowling game. In September we celebrated the last summer days during BBQ at the TU Delft campus. In October, Promood took part in the Battle of the Brains where we beat the Leiden University. We kissed the year 2011 goodbye by hosting Sinterklaas on the boat. He came from Spain to endow us with very precious presents. We would like to do more for our members, provide you with something different than the usual actives….but then we need as well your initiative to show us what you expect.

PromooD’s 2011 Barbecue 16 September 2011, PSOR Café

PromooD’s 2011 Sinterklaas

09 December 2011, Boat at De Nieuwe Haven

spring 2012

Opinion

about research, sports, life and other subjects....

Communication is about more than just sending information, it’s about dialogue, interaction, exchanging experiences. A concept which is based on these starting points is the Human Library. The Human Library is an internationally applied concept, and it’s about borrowing people instead of books. The basic principle is that the participants come closer together and that their mutual relationship and understanding are strengthened through conversation and getting to know each other. This simple and powerful method creates a bond between participants who would not meet under ‘normal’ circumstances.

This method is recognized as one that could also be suitable to strengthen relationships and enlarge understanding between different groups within our community. TU Delft adapted the Human Library concept, starting with a customised version for PhD students: ´TU Human Library: PhDs meet the rector´. By doing so TU Delft hopes to make PhDs feel more at home and improve horizontal communication - between PhDs - and vertical communication – between PhDs and other groups with6

Human Library Borrowing people instead of books! Renske van der Zwaard R.vanderZwaard-vanOosterom@tudelft.nl

in our TU Delft community. Both the PhD students and the rector assemble a collection of ‘Living books’. These ‘Living Books’ may be professors, lecturers, staff members, other PhD students, trainees or students at

TU Delft. People with a special story. During evening sessions, which take place in TU Delft Library, the PhD students choose a book from the rector’s collection, a book which they think is interesting for the rector to get to know, and vice versa. In two rounds of discussion, the chosen Living Books then share their story with the participants. The concept ‘TU Human Library: PhDs meet the rector’ follows the same principle as the earlier project ´Meeting the rector´, namely that the rector

of TU Delft and the PhD students meet each other in an informal setting that can offer surprises to both parties. The concept is developed by Marion Vredeling (program manager at TU Delft Library) on request of Rector Magnificus Karel Luyben. TU Delft Library wants to be a ‘Centre of Belonging’; in particular for those PhD students who do not have a natural meeting place on campus. The Library is keen to facilitate solutions to this problem. Initiating and accommodating a project such as the TU Human Library is just one of these solutions. Do you want more information, do you want to co-operate in the preparations, do you have an interesting story to tell,

or do you know a PhD student who could be a ‘Living book’? Please inform the Human Library project-leader by sending an e-mail to: m.vredeling@tudelft.nl The next session will take place in TU Delft Library on 16 May 2012 (20.0023.00)

Renske van der Zwaard is the Marketing and Communication Manager of TU Delft Library

het proefschrift

Opinion

about research, sports, life and other subjects....

“The only way you can create a new culture in this university is by talking, and talking – by talking a lot.” This was one sentence that just about summed up this past Thursday evening’s Human Library event, and the efforts that surround its implementation. The sentence came from TU Delft’s Rector Magnificus, Karel Luyben, who chaired the session, in collaboration with Marion Vredeling (program manager at the TU Delft library learning center), who mothered the event into being. Indeed, there was an explicit nature to the event’s purpose, largely because the whole event consisted in a lot of talking, a lot asking, and a lot of answering. Some events can pass along with the underlying purpose remaining unspoken, even unknown – that was not the case with this one. We discussed the purpose itself, at least one component of it: to help create an academic culture that supersedes the 70 or so national cultures that could otherwise divide us, and hinder the synergy we could so easily benefit from. So, instead of being unknown, the underlying reason for the existence of the event was explicitly talked about, and even scrutinized by some of the attendees, with the aim of perhaps refinement of the event in future sessions to come –an interesting attribute to observe. Indeed the whole evening (and I do mean whole evening – discussion was still going strong when I had to leave just before midnight) was rich with conversation and insight into one another’s, sometimes quite different, mental mapping. Whether during the two presentations that were given, or during the break times, it consistently felt like more time could have been used to get a little more out of what people wanted to say. The opening sentence of this article was taken from one of those break times. The rest of this short article will focus on the two presentations given. It was the two invited speakers who gave the core substance to the event, and their sharing with the attendees constituted the essence of the human library experience. These two guests spring 2012

A Time to Talk

Tim Cayford T.J.Cayford@tudelft.nl

“The only way you can create a new culture in this university is by talking, and talking – by talking a lot.” Rector Magnificus, Karel Luyben

were invited to share with us highlights of their life experience, to be read by all, as open books. After all, what greater book than a person herself? Sana Amir was the first book to open up. She is a PhD (CITG), and was chosen by the rector because of the clarity of her bio which had been among a handful of other candidates for the event. This clarity shone through during the presentation as well, where we 20 or so listeners were able to share in the journey she has both endured and enjoyed from Pakistan to the Netherlands, and within the Netherlands still. The degree to which she was open was touching, in that she shared some experience of her suffering with us, and encouraging, in that we saw that she came through it, in part at least, through the communication she was able to have with those who supported her. Her assessment of cultural differences between these two countries was insightful (food, an obvious

one; two very different reasons for using umbrellas - sun, in Pakistan, rain in Holland - a slightly less intuitive one). Her identification and exposé of stereotypes she has seen projected in both directions were honest and revealing (Europeans don’t all hate Pakistanis; Pakistani neighbourhoods are not all violence-ridden polygamous Taliban strongholds). Following the PhD book, one from the faculty was taken from the shelf and given the floor. Anja Stokkers is Director for the Real Estate Management department (FMVG) in the administration of the university. Her theme was ‘Significant Space’, and her experience and outlook was, well, spacious. She possessed a kind of fervour for optimal, while creative space utilization, bored with the easier task of just designing and creating another building. If you can’t use the space you already have, what can justify creating more space? So what comprised the evening turned out to be a lot more than two human books themselves. But the interaction between the books and their readers, and the readers themselves. The totality lied not in the presentations given, but the connecting of people involved. Summing up, it was easy to have left the gathering feeling like you might like to have a few more books opened up which were there. Ones that were lying open perhaps, but largely unread, during the break times. It was the openness that struck a chord that evening. An openness which you walked away from, only hoping it might be a little contagious, and that maybe, people will keep listening, and will keep talking.

Timothy Cayford (Seattle, USA) is a Deputy Editor of the HP. He is also a PhD candidate at the Economics of Infrastructure department, TPM faculty. 7

Opinion

about research, sports, life and other subjects....

Talking is easy. We all do it often enough. I once found myself talking with a physical therapist seated next to me on a long distance flight. The cramped seating arrangement on airplanes became an obvious topic. His experience apparently taught him how humans tend to adjust seats in their vehicles - even for travelling short distances - whilst many people sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours average per day never consider their seating position at all. This of course has nothing to do with communication, however it does make an interesting introduction to my article. The analogy here is that people talk every day, although they never think about how they communicate in the first place. Talking could be used for passing the time or releasing pressure, but could also be used for exchanging information. And where else could the precise exchange of information be more important than at a technical university? No doubt the daily informal exchange of information around the coffee machine is important, but arguably less important than the conversations you are meant to have towards completing your PhD. As trivial as it may sound, the ability to be able to communicate efficiently is one of the most useful tools you can have as a PhD candidate and yet one which can be uncommon. Completing a PhD requires a significant amount of self autonomy and transitioning from completing a Masters degree to starting a PhD is not without pain. Running into difficult problems is not a barrier anymore – it is a destiny. Problems which marked the boundaries of your Masters study now become the starting point of your PhD. If you are doing a PhD and you don’t have any problems, you aren’t doing it right. Gone are the days of being told what should be done and how these problems should be solved – these decisions are being made by you now. This incidentally includes communicating as well. And you must make sure you do it as well. Some readers might be familiar with the two generals’ problem, where two 8

The importance of Communicating it Right Johan Wolmarans J.J.Wolmarans@tudelft.nl

armies under the command of two generals must exchange information without the certainty that messages will be successfully received. This thought experiment becomes rather relevant in a multicultural environment. Delft University of Technology draws students from all over the world, so communicating is by default more difficult due to the cultural diversity present. In a daily setting people communicating are able to respond to body language, tone of voice and gestures. But what if these gestures all of a sudden mean something else? Communicating successfully can be difficult at the best of times, but now add differing languages, cultures, habits and situations into the mix and communication becomes infinitely complex. Since you as PhD student must fend for yourself, you are now tasked to ensure your own messages to fellow PhD students, supervisors and colleagues are sent and received successfully. Another situation frequently encountered includes misunderstandings, where messages are received but misunderstood. This typically results in frustration because certain expectations are not being met. This happens because one party has no idea what the other party was expecting from them. This can be resolved by what is known as management of expectations. It is critical that you make your expectations known to whoever it is you might be working with or asking something from. Sometimes a certain action might be expected because it seems conventional given your own background. Differing backgrounds ensures that this is simply not the case in every instance. By ensuring

that everyone involved in a particular action understands what is expected from them and what they should be doing, these misunderstandings can be avoided. When communicating with your supervisor or promotor the same applies, perhaps even more strongly. Making sure that all communication is received and understood both ways is the way to go. The significant difference in culture also applies. One thing which is taken for granted is your supervisors’ experience in communicating. You might not know it, but a skilled supervisor might be answering questions and offering information which you have not asked for. Supervisors have to meet with many students from differing backgrounds, differing methods of communication and most importantly – different expectations. The management of your own expectations as well as that of your supervisor is most important. If your supervisor is not aware of your expectations, wants and needs, it is not possible to have them met. Conversely, if you do not fully understand what your supervisor is asking from you, you are not able to interpret and act on that expectation and deliver what is required. Ask, ask and ask again. Any matter which is not clear must be cleared up right away. Do not ever leave a meeting with any questions unanswered. Adopt the attitude that you are here to learn, and you can only do that by asking. If need be, ask again. Misunderstandings can be very demoralising and this is a big problem in an environment where most of your motivation needs to be created by yourself. Talking and communicating with your peers is also important on a social level to create a support network. Take the time to get to know your colleagues. After all, completing your PhD will last only a few years, the friendships you create during these difficult years will last much longer.

Johan Wolmarans (Johannesburg, South Africa) is a PhD researcher in the Electrical Power Processing (EPP) group of the EEMCS Faculty at TU Delft.

het proefschrift

Opinion

about research, sports, life and other subjects....

One of the most inspiring moments in my work comes when I guide people to express themselves as they have never done before. Often I teach people from the TU Delft who discover that presenting or writing isn’t the horrible experience they thought it was, that it is actually quite easy to do with the help of the clear guidelines that we give them. In fact some of them discover to their joy that they have an innate capability to add humour to their presentations or that they are actually very conscientious writers, able to express difficult ideas in clear language. As a lecturer at the Institute of Languages and Academic Skills, I work with students and PhDs from across the whole university. I often jokingly say to my friends that I must be one of the most well-informed people at the university, getting presentations and reports on a wide range of subjects from missions to Mars to life-saving new surgical equipment. The history of the institute is quite long but it is only in recent years that most of the faculties at TUDelft have added the presentation and writing courses as a fixed part of their curriculums: students do well to know a lot about their field of study, but that knowledge goes to waste if they can’t communicate their ideas to others. It is also for that reason that the Graduate School has added many of the courses that are taught at our institute to their range of courses. One of the most popular courses amongst foreign PhDs is the Dutch course for foreigners. Did you know that the method that was developed here in Delft won prizes for years on end for being the quickest way to achieve a very high proficiency in Dutch so students can join Dutch lectures as quickly as possible? Of course it is also one of the surest ways of being able to join in Dutch discussions with your neighbours and people on the street and is also for that reason a big favourite amongst PhDs who long to fit into Dutch society faster. Another favourite of foreign PhDs who try to gain insight into the Dutch way of doing things is the course on spring 2012

Communication Makes the PhD World go Round Regina Tange-Hoffmann R.J.Tange-Hoffmann@tudelft.nl

students do well to know a lot about their field of study, but that knowledge goes to waste if they can’t communicate their ideas to others. Upgrading Your Intercultural Project Management Skills. During this course intercultural differences are explained and there is even a field trip to Gouda in order to go into the ins and outs of Dutch society. One of the most useful parts of the course is the workshop on how to communicate effectively with colleagues from different countries. Even though this course is geared towards foreign PhDs, Dutch participants have also been very enthusiastic about the insight it gave them into working with others from different countries. The course with which I gain the most astonishing results, is the course on Presenting Scientific Research. It is a miscellaneous group of PhDs from across the university where they are coached into presenting their ideas for various different audiences. The situations that are practiced are conference situations, peer sessions, pitches and also short presentations to a mixed audience with people not from the same

faculty. By the end of the course the PhDs are able to structure their presentations well and have practiced often on communicating their ideas with the enthusiasm that those ideas deserve. How important this course is to PhDs was underlined by the inspiring Delft Innovation Award conference I joined in December 2011. At that occasion countless PhDs gave pitch and poster presentations of their research to the public and jury. With the tips they received from our institute many of them were able to pitch their ideas with flair and enthusiasm. Besides the courses outlined above, there are many other communication courses that are taught via the Graduate School by my colleagues that will undoubtedly be very interesting to many PhDs. One of them is the English for Academic Purposes course. During that course PhDs come together and learn how to structure their thoughts effectively in clear language. And did you know that our institute even teaches courses on debating skills and Spanish? As you can see, there is a course that will fill almost every need, whatever your communication requirements are. I hope that many of the readers of Het Proefschrift will be inspired to follow a course with us so you too will be able to express yourself with the full enthusiasm and clarity that your ideas deserve.

Drs. Regina Tange-Hoffmann (Katwijk,The Netherlands) is lecturer in presentation techniques and academic writing skills and at the Centre for Language and Academic Skills. She teaches a Graduate School course on intercultural communication and lectures on Development, Sustainability and Culture at the TBM faculty. 9

What are you doing?

Research abstracts from TU Delft’s phd community and research centres

In the past decades the increased growth in mobility has led to more interest in the role of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions. Information and ICT solutions can influence travellers’ behaviour and consequently steer drivers to less congested routes. When there is growth in mobility, travel times also vary more and congestion patterns also increase. Consequently, it is very difficult to predict the duration of a trip, to decide the best time to start a trip, or even if it is possible to arrive on time for an appointment without the aid of information.

Analysis and Modelling of Dynamic Network Effects of ICT Use Giselle Ramos G.M.Ramos@tudelft.nl

interview and text by

Regina Tange-Hoffmann R.J.Tange-Hoffmann@tudelft.nl

When information is provided, travellers have to decide whether to follow this information, and the complexity of the decision increases when the information provided (e.g. travel time, queue length) differs from the expectations of the drivers. The quality of information appears to be crucial to the confidence and compliance of drivers. Inconsistent information, i.e. information that does not correspond to the current traffic situation, may on the one hand lead to unwanted changes in behaviour. On the other hand, it may become useless if drivers decide not to comply with it at all. For a proper understanding of travellers’ behaviour it is fundamental to understand the relation between route choice behaviour and information provision.

ternalities, and (iv) economic effects. The research being conducted by the Department of Transport & Planning of the TU Delft focuses on the analysis and modelling of dynamic network effects of ICT use. The main objective of this PhD project is to investigate whether and how (much) provision of traffic information helps alleviating congestion.

In order to investigate the impact of information provision through ICT and its consequences for society as a whole, a joint research program has been proposed by the TU Eindhoven, TU Delft and VU University of Amsterdam and financed by the Dutch Organization of Science (NWO). This program is called TRISTAM: Traveller Response and Information Service Technology: Analysis and Modelling. From an integrated perspective the program focuses on investigating the effects of ICT solutions on: (i) road network effects, (ii) accessibility effects, (iii) spatial ex-

The PhD candidate Giselle M. Ramos started the project about 2.5 years ago. A great part of this period was spent reviewing the extensive literature on route choice behaviour and defining the setup of the experiment to investigate the relationship between travellers’ behaviour and information provision. The experiment consisted of investigating the route choice behaviour of 32 commuters between Delft and The Hague over a period of 2 months. As Giselle explained “the participants were tracked with GPS devices during their commute trips and

equipped with TomTom devices with real time traffic information. They were also able to check the available free sources of traffic information (radio, internet, TV). Together with travel diaries they had to fill in (daily), it will be possible to build up a model to investigate how travellers react to information”. In order to build up the proposed model, it is necessary to know not only what the participants did (which route they chose and how long it took), but also what the actual traffic situation was in the road network during the experiment. Giselle further clarified that “the benefit of the choice that is made has to be compared to the available choice alternatives”. This underlines the need to know the actual traffic situation during the period of the experiment. Currently Giselle is analysing the data from her route choice experiment. The “I” (information) of ICT is the focus of Giselle’s PhD project. The “C” (communication), however, has been playing a very important role since she started her PhD. Brazilian from origin, it was necessary for her to further improve her English to do the PhD. Now that this has been achieved, she has started learning Dutch to feel even more at home at TU Delft. Giselle acknowledges that “communication has also been the key to help selecting participants to join the experiment, getting the cooperation of TomTom to obtain data with respect to the traffic situation during the experiment, and, of course, presenting my work at conferences”. From February to May of 2012 she will be in Stockholm, Sweden, for the modelling and main analysis of this research which will be done in cooperation with the KTH University.

Giselle Ramos (Recife, Brazil) is a PhD candidate at the Transport & Planning department, CEG Faculty.

het proefschrift

Life post-Doc

and what then, after your phd?

It’s a weird term if you think about it, post-doc. The next step in the academic ladder is called assistant-professor which is defined by what comes after it. But a postdoc is a whole phase in your career defined by what came before it, the PhD. With such a vague term it should come as no surprise that the description of a postdoc depends on who you ask. Postdocs tend to think of themselves as assistant-professors without the benefits while professors might think of them as just assistants. My friends finally understand that I am paid to do something useful now that the ‘student’ in ‘PhD student’ is gone. When trying to describe what postdocs do I found that they are in a way like professional soccer players. According to the time sheet I dutifully fill in every week I spend 8 hours per day on research. Those 8 hours might as well be 4 hours, or 10, I don’t really keep track of how much time I spend on ‘useful’ things. Luckily postdocs get judged on results, just like professional soccer players do. Lionel Messi, playing for Barcelona (let’s aim high), does not get paid for working 8 hours a day, he receives his salary for scoring goals. Beautiful and important goals that get viewed by millions. Similarly, postdocs are expected to perform groundbreaking research the results of which are shared with the world, though the audience and the salary are usually smaller. Soccer players know that they can not peak year-round. They take a break after the Champions League or World Cup final. As a postdoc (but also as a PhD) I think it is a good idea to do that too. Pursue your research idea with dedication, but after the top conference or high-impact paper it is OK to spend some time chatting or reordering the folders on your computer. And yes, you can still fill in 8 hours of work on your time-sheet. Luckily, postdocs are more like soccer players that have to score goals once in a while than accountants that bill for the hour. How to get such a fantastic postdoc position at the club of your choice? First ask yourself (why not right now) if you want to continue in research after spring 2012

Post-doc or Pre-something Wouter van der Wal W.vanderWal@tudelft.nl

When trying to describe what Postdocs do I found that they are in a way like professional soccer players.

ates have a thesis to show but not all of them get the funding or the research position they want. As an example of making yourself attractive, there is a relatively easy way how you can play for the research equivalent of the Barcelona soccer club. Just ask a good professor in your field if you can visit his or her group to do joint research. From what I heard from others and experienced myself you are likely to encounter a cooperative attitude. A short research visit abroad boosts your experience as well as your CV at the cost of a bit more than a conference. It will give you a head start for a great career that will far outlast that of any professional soccer player.

you PhD, and second, what is it you want to research. Continuing on your PhD topic? Obvious advantages there, it is much easier to make a name in the field. Or maybe change topic to make your CV more robust, or just because you want to. In any case think about the research group that fits your interest and think about how to make yourself attractive to them. All PhD gradu-

Wouter van der Wal received his MSc in Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft. He did his PhD in Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary (Canada). During his PhD he stayed briefly at the University of Colorado and Ohio State University. He now works as a postdoc at TU Delft on measuring and modeling vertical motion of the Earth’s crust. Recently he obtained a VENI research grant to extend numerical modeling to Greenland and Antarctica. He rarely watches a full soccer match. 11

Video Stills from “Grande Hotel”. Lotte Stoops (2010) © Serendipity Films

het proefschrift

Relax Corner

about music, cinema, books, whatever

Porno and misery of the Grande Hotel Grande Hotel - A film by Lotte Stoops (2010) Serendipity Films

review by Jorge Mejia Hernandez J.A.MejiaHernandez@tudelft.nl

Among the many causes of miscommunication sometimes lies something as simple as the lack of a word or term in a particular context. Unfamiliar with a critique category, the spectators of the film Grande Hotel (Lotte Stoops, 2010), shown as part of the AFFR in Rotterdam, seemed puzzled by the discussion that rose after the projection – parties in dispute seemingly unable to communicate, mediators pouring petrol in the combustible fires of confusion, instead.

life of the slum and its twisted characters. Social awareness, they called it. Forty years later, Grande Hotel is still a classic porno. Classic misery porn, that is. Everything in the film, in the explanations given by its author (baby conveniently hanging to complete the “African-mom” characterization) before and after the projection in (another vulgar exhibition of onanism) “the World’s Largest Architecture BEIRA, MOZAMBIQUE

SERENDIPITY FILMS P R E S E N T S IN CO - PRODUCTION WITH VOLYA FILMS

GRANDE HOTEL

“Porno”, I thought, comfortably enjoying this theatre of the absurd, generated by the lack of a simple moniker. Porn feeds on distance. Whoever can’t (or doesn’t want to) get truly involved in the slapping, stinking, sloppy acts portrayed, can comfortably participate as an observer. Security is almost guaranteed. As meagre as the production of Latin American cinema (exception made of Argentina and México, perhaps) was in the seventies, the exhibitionist strategy met some success. With ridiculous budgets, an almost total lack of experience and little or no objective public, budding filmmakers found in “pornomiseria” (misery porn) comfortable grounds for launching their careers. Poverty as ends and means made it possible to earn some mileage by simply rolling (literally) in/on conflictive social scenarios in the poverty-stricken barrios. While the local public ignored the production of many of these flicks, post ‘68 European moviegoers, avid for an experience akin to that of the pornographer, became interested in the spring 2012

A F I LM BY

LOTTE STOOPS

WWW.GRANDEHOTELTHEMOVIE.COM

SERENDIPITY FILMS I N C O - P R O D U C T I O N W I T H VOLYA FILMS D I R E C TO R O F P H OTO G R A P H Y JOAO RIBEIRO S O U N D GABRIEL MONDLANE YVES DE MEY C O - P R O D U C E R DENIS VASLIN P R O D U C E R ELLEN DE WAELE D I R E C TO R LOTTE STOOPS

EDITING

ematographic intentions or achievements. Instead, she spoke about the difficulties of being a stranger, allowed by virtue of perseverance and other lofty moral traits to participate in the miserable rituals of these dirty, kinky human beings, who have turned a luxurious hotel into a shithole in Beira, Mozambique, destroying it by the day. While the rest of the public was apparently ecstatic – multiple (socially aware) orgasms guaranteed without the need of getting involved in all the slapping, stinking, sloppy action going on – I remembered other documentaries of the genre, and was therefore unsurprised. As the post-coitum discussion concentrated on center-periphery-colonialist issues, I (dirty mind, you might say) could only envision the director of a Porn, proudly justifying that perfect shot of the two entangled bodies taken from a nasty angle. Meanwhile, the gorgeous couple that entered the set – all made up and clean – lies literally wasted in bed. Just like the Grande Hotel.

KATARINA TÜRLER, DIETER DIEPENDAELE

SOUND DESIGN AND MIX

www.flandersimage.com

Film Festival”, and in the posterior debate; everything – I insist – was as pornographic as the acts of the pizza delivery boy who meets the lonely garter-belted wife, creating a trio with the lonely spectator who looks but doesn’t touch. Ms. Stoops didn’t actually speak about her film, nor was it ever really discussed; not once did she mention its form, script, editing process or cin-

Jorge Mejia Hernandez (Cali, Colombia) is a PhD candidate at the Architecture department, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. 13

ÂŠ Photo: Michael Wank

het proefschrift

Inside TU

faculties and research centers at TU Delft

Electrical Sustainable Energy Department EEMCS Faculty On August 26, 2010, Mr. Emile Roemer, Party leader of the Socialist party, and Mr. Paulus Jansen, both members of the Dutch House of Representatives, visited the Delft University of Technology. What makes two Dutch House congressmen to visit a TU Delft laboratory? Society has now largely acknowledged the importance of renewable energy forms – especially solar energy – for the generation of electricity. Here in TU Delft, the PMVD group performs topnotch research in several areas of solar energy, although the group mainly focuses in the development of thin-film silicon solar cells. Thin-film silicon solar cells belong to the second generation of solar cells. The first generation is the most common one, represented by bulk crystalline silicon solar cells. These cells are the ones you usually see on rooftops of some houses. They have a reasonable efficiency, but somewhat high price. The thin-film solar cells still have a lower efficiency in comparison with the classical ones, but they are cheaper so the main objective for the future is to be competitive with the first generation. Nevertheless, thin-film solar cells have a great advantage: they use only a fraction of the material necessary to produce regular solar cells, so they are lighter and much more flexible. For the practical research aspects here at TU Delft we must be able to produce the photovoltaic materials inside the university. The PVMD group has all the necessary equipment for creating a solar cell located in one of the two TU Delft cleanrooms. If you didn’t know there was one, there are actually two of them. The cleanroom, where the PVMD group makes its samples, is actually part of The Delft Institute of Microsystems and Nanoelectronics Technology Center (DimesTC). spring 2012

The Clean Room Pavel Babal P.Babal@tudelft.nl

But then you may be now wondering, what is a cleanroom? A cleanroom is an environment, typically used in manufacturing or scientific research, that has a low level of environmental pollutants such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles and chemical vapours. More accurately, a cleanroom has a controlled level of contamination that is specified by the number of particles per cubic meter at a specified particle size. Only to give an idea, the outside ambient air in a typical urban environment contains circa 35 million particles per cubic meter in the 0.5 µm-size range and larger. This would correspond to an ISO 9 cleanroom. On the other hand, an ISO 1 cleanroom does not allow particles that big and it must contain only up to 12 particles per cubic meter of 0.3 µm or smaller. Ok, but how do you go from having 35 million particles per cubic meter to only 12? All the equipment inside the cleanroom is designed to generate minimal air contamination. Even specialised mops and buckets exist. Cleanroom furniture is also designed to produce a minimum of particles and to be easy to clean. Common materials such as paper, pencils, and fabrics made from natural fibers are often excluded; however, alternatives are available. Cleanrooms are not sterile (i.e. free of uncontrolled microbes) environments, the attention is given towards airborne particles. Additionally, some cleanrooms are kept at a positive pressure so that if there are any leaks, air leaks out of the chamber instead of unfiltered air coming in.

The staff working in the cleanroom enter and leave through airlocks (sometimes including an air shower stage), and wear protective clothing such as hoods, face masks, gloves, boots and coveralls. Just like the ones you may have seen if you watched any movie where they have to deal with highly intoxicating viruses. Low-level cleanrooms may only require special shoes, ones with completely smooth soles that do not track in dust or dirt. However, shoe bottoms must not create slipping hazards, safety always takes precedence. Entering a cleanroom usually requires wearing a cleanroom suit. There is an anteroom (known as a “gray room”), in which the special suits must be put on. In the beginning, working in a cleanroom environment can be a little annoying. It can be especially time consuming to dress up into the cleanroom suit. But, as with everything in life, after a while you get used to it and it becomes a routine. Before, I would take around 5 minutes to get ready, but now I can do it in one minute and even without thinking much about it. All the people working in a cleanroom have to go through a safety course before you’re allowed to perform any work inside it. That is understandable since there are risks involved. We are working with dangerous gases and very strong acids, thus safety is very important. However, it is fun to work in the cleanroom, the equipment is all stateof-the-art and the girls working there do appreciate the fact it is a spider-free environment, ask them!

Pavel Babal (Bratislava, Slovakia) is a PhD researcher in the Photovoltaic Materials and Devices (PVMD) group of the EEMCS Faculty at TU Delft. 15

(Un) Confidential report news from scientifical events

Is Anybody Listening? A Review of (Another) Energy Conference Energy Delta Convention 2011 International Platform for Science, Business & Government November 21-23, 2011, Groningen, The Netherlands Tim Cayford T.J.Cayford@tudelft.nl

Nowadays you cannot have an energy conference without talking about climate change. This conference was no exception. Throughout the conference, the paradigm of moving toward a more environmentally sound energy scheme was a dominant, if unspoken, theme. But though we seem to be pretty good at talking about the environmental challenges that face our energy plans, I wonder if we are very good at listening. A bit paradoxically, a cheerful tone from the start was embedded in the opening remarks: “Someone wrote recently that ‘ten years ago we had Johnny Cash, we had Bob Hope, and we had Steve Jobs. Now we don’t have cash, we’ve lost hope, and there’s no more jobs.’ This someone apparently wasn’t in the energy industry, because here we have plenty of cash, a lot of hope, and lots of jobs.” But while the quote above may be a garment of optimism during a cold winter, what followed was such a blast of cold air, that you would think most people would start running for warmer shelter. And perhaps that’s exactly what we did. Shortly following the opening remarks, Aad van Bohemen, Head Emergency Policy Division of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, stood in front of the audience to report to us the findings of the IEA’s 2011 World Energy Outlook (WEO), which hit the press November 9. The most chilling findings were that if we (human society) continue with our current policies we will have a 6° Celsius increase in temperature by 2035. If we implement new pol16

The conference was filled with roomfuls of innovative people driven to implement courageous ideas to shape tomorrow’s world to be a more environmentally sound one icies that are being put forth, we will have a 3.5° increase by the same year. If we continue without a dramatic shift in policy design and implementation, we will ‘hit the wall’ in five years. That is, from 2017 onward forever, everything built: cars, power plants - everything - must be carbon neutral, if we are to moderate human-driven temperature increases to 2°. To help put these numbers in perspective, a 6° rise translates into about ½ a meter sealevel rise . A 2° rise means about ¼ of a meter sea level. If we average the risk, and go for the middle, say a 1/3 meter rise, then taking one example, like the United States, we can expect that just under 60,000 sq km (roughly 150% of the size of the Netherlands) of it will be under water, or under threat of it (and flooding of course is just one of a litany of effects). After reflecting on what was being said, I looked around a bit, and thought, ‘are we really hearing this?’ The answer is, yes, we are hearing this. I guess the real question is, ‘Is anybody listening?’ Well, this observer would

say that it didn’t seem like it for the duration of the conference. We simply continued, unaltered. It was like we sank deeper into the warmth of our immediate comfort. Admittedly, this brief article so far does not convey much of a two-sided picture. The conference was filled with roomfuls of innovative people driven to implement courageous ideas to shape tomorrow’s world to be a more environmentally sound one. And out of that, and to that end, the conference was concluded with a session devoted to the creation of an Energy Academy in Groningen, a forum for bringing businesses and academics together on the subject of energy. This is being implemented with the idea that students can be furnished with the tools to tackle the energy demands and challenges of the future. “If we don’t change directions soon, we’ll end up where we’re heading.” Those were the words on the first slide of Mr. van Bohemen’s presentation, and this is the opening caption of the executive summary of the WEO report. With our current projection, we are on a road to a worsening environment, not an improving one. Likewise, we are currently on a road to a worse energy situation, not an improved one. Whether or not the graduates of the Energy Academy will have been good listeners, they’ll probably find plenty of jobs. Tim Cayford is a PhD student living and working in Delft within the section of Economics of Infrastructure. He is working on a thesis involving the governance of decentralized bio-methane production and distribution.

het proefschrift

From the other side

a view on research from another perpspective

Education and Research Prof. Eric Mazur interviewed by

Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto R.TeixeiraPinto@tudelft.nl

Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto (R): Prof. Mazur, the main theme of this HP issue is communication. What are the main skills of a good communicator? Prof. Eric Mazur (M): I will dodge your question a little bit and tell you about my passion on communication and then I will try to get back to your question. I have always liked communication and I discovered that when I was in high-school here [n.b. Prof. Mazur is Dutch]. I tend to be a shy person, still am in a sense, and maybe that’s because of my multi-cultural born background, but during presentations I have noticed that I was able to captivate the audience. We had to sometimes give presentations on Science and I loved giving something of value to the audience. I have always worked very very hard on my presentations. Now back to your question. I have sat through so many bad presentations. You only have to go to a conference and in most of the talks after one minute you are already thinking “What am I going to do here?”. Connecting to the audience, by giving something they can connect their own experiences to, is the most important skill of a good communicator. You were in my talk on education and you should have noticed that I do not tell people what to do, rather I tell people my story, from my perspective. There is a personal connection and they can draw their own conclusions and determine whether it applies to them or not. I try to make it a personal story by connecting it to my experience and I tend to keep very few visuals. There may be only 20 slides in total for an entire hour and sometimes I talk without any visuals at all. R: What about scientific talks? M: In science what I always try to do spring 2012

Connecting to the audience, by giving something they can connect their own experiences to, is the most important skill of a good communicator in my talks is to start with a hook so that you capture the audience right away in the start. I give them something that sort of frames the problem, in a way that everybody, regardless of their background, even if they haven’t had any science at all, can connect to. A lot of scientists have a tendency to go straight to what they are doing and expect everybody in the audience to be an expert. I have noticed that people are never offended by hearing things they know, but they turn off by hearing things they can’t follow. In most of my talks, 80% of the content are things that most people already know. I may give it a slightly different twist but they are things that people already know. Just 20% is probably something they don’t know because we have a limited capacity for absorbing new material. R: Communication is very important for science and engineering, yet most technical universities do not seem to formally include it in the

students’ curricula, it is not something we learn at school. How is this situation in Harvard? M: I have a big smile on my face because many of the skills that you will need in your career later are not taught formally and most of the things you learn now you will not need later in your career, it is so ironic. I never had any formal training in communication, yet it is so incredibly important. One of the things I have done for our physics majors is that I have done a course that specifically aims at those communication skills. This is how it works: it is a physics course, but instead of me teaching it, the students are teaching it. One after the other. There are about 10 students in the class, so you keep rotating them. And I don’t examine them ever on the content. You may think that’s strange for modern physics. But it is basically the research that is happening in the physics department at Harvard. How can you teach a course in physics and never examine the subject? The premise is if you want to be able to communicate, you have to master it completely. The person who learns the most in the classroom is always the teacher, so the idea is to make the students the teacher. I have found out that the students love it, because they get to improve their communications skills. It is much more fun if you have to study to make a presentation than to study to pass an exam. At the same time I videotape them and we go over the videotape and we talk about things like posture, articulation and discussion handling. I try to give them a little more formal training of different aspects of communication skills because it is such an important point. (continues next page) 17

R: We have talked about oral communication skills. What about written communication skills? M: A few years ago there was a paper in Science, with the title “Clear as mud”. It was about the incredibly poor state of scientific writing. I have to agree that the papers are so poorly written and there is so little editorial control, even by Journals like Science and Nature. Papers sometimes are hard to follow and you as a graduate student probably know. You look up a paper and you have to read, and re-read, and re-read, in order to understand what the writer was trying to communicate. I think that this is another communication skill which we do not practice enough and early enough. R: Why is that? M: Because when we take our courses, most of the assessments in Physics regard equations that explain a car going down the highway and hitting a tree and so on. That is a mere mathematical manipulation skill. I think it is a big hole in our education and I learned my scientific writing skills because I had a PhD advisor who grilled me! I would write something and then I would get it back marked up in-between the lines, and he would had written as much as I have written. His remarks were as extensive as my own writing. I learned to evaluate every single word. If you can take out a word and still means the same thing, then you take it out. Keep it as simple as possible. He was very strict on punctuation, everything. If you write well, you can communicate your results better. You can do great work but if you communicate it poorly, it might not get accepted or it might not get understood, which is even worse. R: You received your PhD in Leiden (1981) then you went to Harvard for a Post-Doc and two years later you started as an assistant Professor. How was your teaching style back then? M: First of all I have never intended to become a Professor, I wanted to go into industry. When I was a Post-Doc I sort of started to enjoy being at the univer18

sity and I saw the assistant professorship as a possibility of extending my Post-Doc. One of the things I had to do was to teach and just as with the communication skills, you don’t get any training as a teacher either. What do you do when you don’t have any training? You imitate other people. I imitated the people who have taught me, and I basically lectured. And because my communication skills were reasonable, I got high ratings, then I thought I did a good job. R: However, at the same time you were getting strange feedbacks from the students. What happened? M: For me it seemed contradictory. They liked me, they liked my lectures but they didn’t like the physics.

Many of the skills that you will need in your career later are not taught formally and most of the things you learn now you will not need later in your career, it is so ironic I thought: ok, maybe physics is not such a great topic for everybody, but the real cause of the problem is that I was really not teaching them physics. I was teaching them how to manipulate equations without understanding what they meant and I was teaching them how to basically regurgitate material that they had memorized. R: Then in the beginning of the 90’s, you have developed your own teaching method: Peer Instruction. Do you think the conventional way of communicating in the classroom is obsolete? What led you to invent your own method?

M: I don’t think it is completely obsolete. You still have to motivate and you still have to transfer information. You can do that outside of the classroom, in the classroom, via video, via a book or typewritten notes. I don’t think it is completely obsolete. The point I want to make is that by itself it’s not sufficient to educate. In a lecture the only thing that happens it that people take notes and try to remember them. You really have to practice it, you have to do it. Let’s go back to communication skills. If I were to teach somebody communication skills, I could start writing on the board about posture and so on. I could write articulation and structure of the talk and people would take notes but they wouldn’t learn much. This will not suffice to develop your communication skills. You have actually to put the student in front of the classroom to practice communication skills. The same is true for anything that is taught. We need to be much more active and not just receivers of information. R: Being a Dutchman, what are, in your perspective, the strengths and weaknesses of the Dutch way of communication? M: I’ve been away for 30 years and until last month, I had not set foot in a Dutch university for almost 12 years. Holland has produced quite some excellent people, but probably they’ve produced themselves rather than the system produced them. It is very dangerous to generalize, but education here or in Germany or France, Asia or the US, is not that different. The thing that excites me, is that there are more and more places, including The Netherlands, where there are talks about active engagement. In fact, the reason I am back here is the Idea League. We are all here to talk about active learning in these different universities and I think this is really exciting. People are realizing we live in the information age and education is not just about delivering information. I can pull up my phone, watch a video and obtain the same experience I would have in the classroom. The role of the universities is changing in part because of the availability of information.

het proefschrift

R: Is Peer Instruction a different way of communicating in the classroom? Does it increase the communication efficiency? M: I don’t know if I would call it communication efficiency. First of all there are a lot of people talking rather than one. I’m doing a lot less communication. In a normal lecture, I’m the one talking and the students are sitting there and listening. With peer instruction, everybody is talking to one another. It is complete chaos, everybody is talking at the same time. The big thing is that it wakes up people, it makes people think, it makes people argue, it actually adds a debating component to merely one way transfer of information or communication. In fact, if you actually listen to an individual conversation they are not that coherent. It is sort of halting and fragment of sentences. In terms of fluid communication it is not that great an example. However, in terms of thinking, in terms of articulating ideas, in terms of developing ideas, it is great. That is what the method really does, it gives an opportunity for people to articulate their own ideas, their own thoughts. Same thing when you’re sitting in your office and you’re working on a problem and all of a sudden you have this great idea. Probably one of the first impulses you have, is to run out and go to somebody else and say: listen to this I had this great idea. In the process of articulating it to this other person you sharpen your own thinking. R: Is it possible to use the Peer Instruction with any subject? M: If you had asked that question to me 6 or 7 years ago I would have said it is probably mostly good for the sciences, but I have discovered that that’s not true. Initially I thought you need a question where there is either a right or wrong answer. Then I discovered that is not necessary at all; anything that has interpretation works just as well. I teach an ethics workshop, because that’s another very important skill, ethical conduct in science. In ethics, in one side there are things that are right and in the other side there are things that are wrong, but in between there is a gray area. What I do is I give the students a spring 2012

You can do great work but if you communicate it poorly, it might not get accepted or it might not get understood, which is even worse question where I can explore this gray area. It is an adaptation of peer instruction, but again it uses the active component rather than saying “if you face this situation this is the action you must take”. Let’s face it, later in life, the type of problems you are going to face are probably problems that you won’t have encountered at all during your PhD; the recipe won’t work. I think developing these skills and preparing people for problems that do not have cookie-cutter solutions is very important. This is often an opportunity that we miss, that we do not exploit. There are people who use peer instruction for French drama or philosophy. I have seen it in veterinarian medicine. There are books on the subject in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics; it is broadly used. I would have never imagined that. R: And what must a lecturer do in order to adopt Peer Instruction in his/ her subject? M: The hard part is always coming up with questions. Questions that stimulate thinking. Rather than preparing a presentation, you are going to prepare questions. This is not very easy because you don’t know what the questions are that the students have. I basically use the students to suggest questions. I give them something to read and I ask them, before class, to send me questions they have about the reading. They have to, they must;

it is part of the grade. The night before class, I go over the questions and: “Oh that’s a brilliant question, I am going to use that in class”. Then I update the questions. R: Is there an example of peer instruction here in TU Delft? M: I have a friend here, Prof. Barend Thijsse. We were both graduate students in the same group. He has being implementing Peer Instruction for a long while in Delft. He visits me often in the US, then he heard about it and started to implement it here. I went to one of his classes one month ago and it was just fun to see the whole class engaged! It was not different from my class, except that they were speaking Dutch rather than English, but it was fun to see it. I think this is an example of it working in a different cultural setting. R: Do you think the cultural setting can have an influence? M: I have seen it work in Asia, I have seen it work in Latin America, Europe. Basically the human mind is curious, we want to understand. Observe any child and you will see they are curious about the world, they are little scientists. They are trying to find an explanation for everything and then somehow we lose that curiosity later on, but you can reawaken it. In a sense, this approach to teaching reawakens that curiosity in people. R: Do you think that technology in the classroom can distract students and have then a negative effect? M: Yes, so can a window or thoughts of your girlfriend. I have heard some professors say we have to take them all away: “no computers in the classroom.” Well, people can still doze off and not be thinking. You don’t control people’s minds. You may control their fingers, but not their minds. In schools you are not going to put boards over windows to prevent students from looking outside to the trees or the street. If students go on to Facebook it is because the perceived value of Facebook is higher than the boring lecture from the Professor. It is really the professor’s (continues next page) 19

problem, not the student’s problem. I have always resisted that, I have always thought rather than forbidding technology in the classroom we should use it, because if you use it for voting or delivering content, there is no time for Facebook. If you engage the students’ brains they are actively participating. They are talking to each other, they are arguing, there is no time to look at Facebook. Any professor that says: “Oh, it is going to be a distraction”, should recognize that as a symptom of a poor classroom. A symptom of a classroom where there is not the right atmosphere, not the right activity. R: You have recently graduated your 45th graduate student. Have you also developed some specific tool to improve the communication between you and your PhDs? M: I had the benefit, and Barend Thijsse too, of a very very good set of advisors. There were two professors at Leiden who really had great interpersonal communication and I try to emulate that in my group. If you look at my group’s website there’s no hierarchy. It is not the professor and the visiting professors and the post-docs and then the graduate students and the undergraduate students. No, we are all the

same. We are all one big family and we work together towards a common goal. I give everybody ownership in the decision making. I do not say to my graduate students, “do this”. We dis-

Let’s face it, later in life, the type of problems you are going to face are probably problems that you won’t have encountered at all during your PhD, the recipe won’t work cuss what are we going to do and we try to rationally decide what the best decision is. And I slowly give people more and more responsibility. Taking ownership of your decisions is when you’re going to take the right deci-

sions and you are going to be prepared later on to take important decisions on your own. I have this sense of avoiding pyramid type of structure with me at the top. Instead, we have a flat hierarchy where we are all one big family, working together, having fun together, enjoying what we are doing and working towards the common goal which is advancing science, advancing our understanding of the universe. R: Does it helps if PhDs are looking at their professors in a horizontal way instead of a vertical way? M: Some are very shy in that respect, they tend to look up to a professor, but we are not different from them, it was not that long ago that I was a graduate student. I have to sometimes encourage people: “Don’t call me Professor, I’m Eric”. I make sure that we have a social fabric that is very good. In addition to doing science together we literally do really have fun together. We will all go bicycling on Martha’s Vineyard or we will all go to Chinatown and have Dim Sum there. We try to actually add a component of fun to the work we do. Science is fascinating, and it is fun.

Eric Mazur (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) obtained his Ph.D. degree in experimental physics at the University of Leiden in 1981. Mazur joined Harvard University in 1982, where he is currently the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics jointly in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and in the Physics Department. He is also the Dean of Applied Physics. 20

het proefschrift

links

useful things to know about

Do you use social media like Facebook, Linked In or Twitter? Although there is a lot of nonsense on the web, there are some benefits for you as a PhD. Here’s practical example on how to use and combine Twitter and Linked In for your research. Twitter basics On www.twitter.com you can post messages (tweets) with a maximum of 140 characters. After creating your profile you can start building your network. Mention TU Delft in your “bio”, and your research area so people can find you. It’s very easy to find people you know on the Twitter website or with Google. By following these people (tweeps) you automatically receive their tweets in your “timeline”. In most cases they will follow you back, so they will receive your tweets. The challenge is to find tweeps who are in your research area. Your tweets Start tweeting what you are working on. Share for example links to images, news, blogs or online presentations like Slideshare. If you are on an important event or at a certain place, use a hashtag like #tudelftlibrary in your

spring 2012

Social media: what’s in it for PhD’s? Marion van Putten M.vanPutten@tudelft.nl

twitter. With the right settings you can decide which tweets are suitable for Linked In. By adding #in your tweet will become visible in your Linked In updates including links to information on the web. This way your network will automatically follow your research steps. It creates a great overview next to your other skills mentioned on your Linked In profile. Social Media Cafe

tweet. Your followers can react on your tweets by “retweeting” (RT) or other people can find and follow you because they like your tweets and appreciate your expertise. Search and lists Structure your tweets so you don’t have to read everything you receive in your timeline. Enter your research area (keywords) in twitter to search for tweets/tweeps. Save your search(es) or create lists with tweeps on your research area. You can also follow lists from others, check out http://twitter. com/#!/tudelft/lists. Linked in Connect your Linked In account to

The TU Delft wants to help you getting the best from Social Media. If you have questions about how to use it, come to the Social Media Cafe in the Library. Two experienced Social Media colleagues will be there to help you. Find more info on the TU Delft website.

Marion van Putten, Library Specialist at the TU Delft Library. Provides Twitterworkshops for TU employees. Twitter: @marionvanputten (http://twitter.com/marionvanputten)

Promood

stay tuned with Promood

Exactly two years ago I joined PromooD … and a year ago, I took the responsibility of being the president of PromooD. Time flies away! I didn’t feel I spent so much time with PromooD. Since I took part of this organization, a lot has happened. More events are organized throughout the year. Since January 2011, we have our regular PromooD VrijMiBo (Vridag Middag Borrel), an after-work event organized every last Friday of the month in a bar in the city center. It has so far been a great success, more and more PhD candidates take part of it. Moreover, this year we tried as much as possible to involve TU Delft in our events, such as the PromooD Career Event or our Printer’s Market. And of course, we have other social events, like the Sinterklaas celebration, bowling, going to the cinema and so on... As I stated previously when I just started as Promood’s president, I aimed at improving the communication between PhD candidates, but also between TU Delft and the PhD candidates. I believe that having those regular events helps achieving a better interaction between PhD candidates from all faculties. As you all should be aware of now, TU Delft is implementing a new system for PhD candidates called the Graduate School. PromooD actively took part of this process, from the very start. We were involved in pretty much all implementation processes and decisionmaking steps. The Graduate School is currently in a pilot phase, where the general courses are given to all PhD

Promood as a Communication Medium. Spread the Word Sylvie Dijkstra-Soudarissanane S.S.Dijkstra-Soudarissanane@tudelft.nl

candidates. From the 1st of January 2012, all new PhD candidates are automatically enrolled in this system. In this frame, PromooD is proud to provide two courses: “How to: Kick-start you PhD” and “How to: Maintain the momentum during your PhD”. These two courses are given from a different perspective than the other courses in the Doctoral Education: they are given by PhD candidates. It is an opportunity for PhD candidates to meet other fellows and share their experience and learn from others. Being the representative body of PhD candidates in TU Delft, we inform our community with what’s going on in TU Delft and other interesting information. I see PromooD as a communication medium. As such, we also gather PhD candidates’ requests, problems, complaints, and help them reach the correct contact persons and solve any issues. We organize lots of events so we reach more and more people. We also have other means of communication, such as our website, our Facebook page, and our regular magazine,

Het Proefschrift. As the famous American humorist Erma Bombeck said: “It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.“ We are currently more than 2200 PhD candidates in TU Delft. PromooD represents them, therefore all PhD candidates in TU Delft should be aware of our presence. So spread the word around you! I joined PromooD in 2009, two years after I started my PhD at the Aerospace Faculty. I never heard of PromooD before that time. Now I hope that everyone in TU Delft has heard of PromooD, and has joined our events. It was a pleasure to work towards a better communication in our community. As I am leaving the board now, I wish good luck to my successor: Ken. I know he will do a great job, and continue improving PromooD. And don’t forget, PromooD is welcoming your ideas and suggestions, so please let us know about what you think! Feel free to join PromooD as a board member. Trust me, I learnt a lot from this wonderful experience! I hope to meet you, either on campus or during one of the PromooD events.

Sylvie Dijkstra-Soudarissanane (Orleans, France) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, CiTG Faculty.

CALL FOR

MANAGING EDITOR

Would you like to become HP’s new managing editor? OTHER PROMOOD BOARD POSITIONS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE contact us! promood-board@googlegroups.com

het proefschrift

Meet the Board

members of PromooD board 2012

President Ken Arroyo Ohori

(Mexico City, Mexico) is a PhD candidate on GIS Technology at the OTB Research Institute

Vice-President Seyed Alireza Rezae

Editor-in-Chief “HP” Nelson Mota

(Tehran, Iran) is a PhD candidate at the Systems Engineering Section, TPM Faculty

(Mesão-Frio, Portugal) is a PhD researcher at the Department of Architecture, A+BE Faculty

Legal Affairs Theo van Ruijven

Managing Editor “HP” / PR Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto

(Ede, the Netherlands) is a PhD candidate at Policy, Organization, Law and Gaming, TPM Faculty

Internal Affairs Hadi Asghari

(Iran) is a PhD in at the department of Policy, Organisation Law and Gaming, TPM Faculty

Webmaster Tiago Espinha

(Marinha Grande, Portugal) is a PhD candidate at the department of Software Technology, EEMCS Faculty

Career Development Tijjani Zubairu

(Okene, Nigeria) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Building Technology, A+BE Faculty

(São Paulo, Brazil) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Electrical Sustainable Energy, EWI Faculty

Deputy Editor “HP” Timothy Cayford

(Seattle, USA), is a PhD candidate on Economics and Infrastructure, TPM Faculty

Social Activities and PR Anna Peksa

(Zakopane, Poland) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geotechnology, CiTG Faculty

Career Development Rahim Delaviz

(Tabriz, Iran), is a PhD candidate at the department of Software Technology, EEMCS Faculty