The PhD students of the Graduate School (GS SimTech) have elected Sibylle Hermann, David Rosin, Ruben Bauer and Xingyao Yu as their new PhD spokespersons. The quartet succeeds Franziska Domeier, Tizian Wenzel and Lukas Brencher, who were in office for two years and had to deal mainly with the effects of the Corona pandemic.
"Cohesion is more important than ever in hard times. Even if we were not able to offer many events in presence, we were always the point of contact for questions and problems and the mouthpiece of the PhD researchers. We wish the new spokespersons a good term of office and hope that we will soon be able to see each other more in presence," Franziska Domeier sums up her term of office.
The election of the new doctoral student spokespersons took place during the SimTech status seminar, which was held in Bad Boll in mid-October.
On behalf of SimTech, we would like to congratulate Sibylle Hermann, David Rosin, Ruben Bauer and Xingyao Yu on their election and say thank you to Franziska Domeier, Tizian Wenzel and Lukas Brencher for their work the last two years!!
The tasks of the PhD spokespersons
Frank Allgöwer, Head of the Graduate School and Vice-Speaker of the Cluster of Excellence SimTech, explains: "The PhD student spokespersons are an important link between the PhD students and the management of the Graduate School. They are contact persons for both sides. For example, doctoral students can contact the spokespersons if they have any problems, and they anonymously forward these to the GS management. The GS SimTech management in turn discusses, for example, ideas for the further development of the graduate school's training concept with the PhD spokespersons, who then bring the doctoral students' perspective into the process."
The institution of the PhD spokespersons has now existed for more than 10 years and has already proven itself many times over. This is an important exchange between both sides that is very much appreciated. "I would like to thank the many PhD spokespersons over this time for their important commitment," says Frank Allgöwer, once again emphasizing the relevance of this function.
The new PhD spokespersons
I work at the Visualization Research Center (VISUS) of the University of Stuttgart in a collaborative project with the University of Bergen, where I am supervised by Michael Sedlmair and Thomas Ertl. There, I am exploring new machine learning and VR/AR-based visualization techniques for the visual exploration of ensemble data in the context of porous media.
During a conversation with one of the previous PhD student speakers, she convinced me to run for election, and that is how I ended up in this position. I expect that being the PhD student spokesperson will be challenging but also enjoyable, especially in terms of organizing the PhD student weekend, which will definitely be fun, but also in terms of providing an interface between other PhD students and SC SimTech.
My name is Sibylle Hermann. I am doing my PhD on the topic "Development of Simulation Software Principles in the Academic Field". In addition, I am a Data and Software Steward at SimTech.
I did not only run for the position of PhD student representative for reasons of diversity. My concern is also to support PhD students in publishing software and data.
I am pursuing my PhD at the Visualization Research Center (VISUS) of the University of Stuttgart, and I am working on enabling biomechanical visualization using augmented reality in PN7-1.
Since I don't do simulation or machine learning in a conventional sense, I think I need a chance to increase my involvement with SimTech; also as a Chinese, I hope that I can encourage more potential researchers from the diverse to join and contribute to SimTech. Actually, I also worked for the student union in my bachelor years, so I expect to help people in need and I think we will have good cooperation on my watch. The only thing I am trying to avoid is losing control of the time- and self-management during trivial tasks.
Like Xingyao, I'm part of the SimTech project PN7-1, a.k.a. PerSiVal, which I'm working on at the Institute for Modelling and Simulation of Biomechanical Systems (IMSB) in the group of Prof. Oliver Röhrle. My job in PN7-1 revolves around surrogate modelling, with the simulation data from the human arm model we are building a real-time application with.
I'm no stranger to representative work, although most of the experience I have with it, is from my school days. I've been raised to see this kind of position as important, even though it can be tedious at times. That being said, I enjoy debates, I enjoy finding common ground on issues and addressing problems. So I expect the position to be fun in that sense.
