Meet the board!

My role in the chapter: I’m the current Chairperson, working mostly with student influence and dealing with different stakeholders within KTH. As Chairperson, I also get to be part of the University Board, the highest body of KTH.

My routine: There are very different days: there are days I essentially do nothing for the chapter, but there are weeks where I barely do any research at all because I get clumped with stuff to do from the Chapter – either preparing documents or meetings or actually discussing/having them. Despite this looking very simple, answering e-mails and replying to people on our Slack is also something that might take a very long time as many times it requires a deep discussion or searching documents.

When you are stepping down from your position? What do you think a person should have to be your successor?

 I’m hopefully stepping down at the end of June as I want to focus on my language skills and to make use of a bit more of the resources KTH gives to the students (KTH Innovation, I’m looking at you). My successor should be someone who’s interested not only in educational influence, but also in politics as many decisions within KTH higher bodies are done in that regard. Of course, ideally, that person should already have experience in dealing with other chapters or KTH too.

I am currently working on a new technology envisioned for 6G mobile communications, namely, “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs)”. These devices basically act like mirrors and lenses for the radio signals that our phones send and receive. Imagine in a room away from windows, we would have connection issues and that 1080p video we are watching on YouTube would keep buffering. However, with RISs, we can extend our coverage into these dead zones as well. I am working on how to use this technology from a signal-processing perspective.

I am currently the Vice Chairperson of the Ph.D. Chapter Board for 2024. I am currently representing the chapter at the Faculty Board and the Employment Board of KTH; the former acts as an advisory body for the rector and works on the quality system within KTH, and the latter evaluates the proposals for new academic positions coming from individual schools. My duty as a student representative is to work at these bodies for the interests of us Ph.D. students. In addition, I am preparing a Ph.D. salary ladder survey to determine what problems we are experiencing. I desire an environment where all Ph.D. students are being treated fairly, and paid fairly as well. To this end, I intend to identify the key issues with the salary ladder and payments to bring them up at the right places to make an impact.

I do not have a constant routine other than waking up and eating, and the work routine is mostly adaptive depending on whether I am waiting for feedback from my supervisors on my research or not. When I am waiting for feedback to make further progress in my research, I usually work on my Ph.D. Chapter duties.

I am stepping down in December 2024, and I believe that to be a good successor for this position, one must be a good communicator and a well-organized individual. We are already working really hard as Ph.D. students, so to fit the Ph.D. Chapter duties into our routines, we have to be aware of what is coming and what is done in our schedule. I believe that since the day I stepped on Swedish soil, scheduling has been the skill that I used the most.

 I study the effects of surface roughness of 3D printed materials on the flow performance of space turbines. In recent years, there has been a greater urge to print components for the space industry in order to cut down costs while promoting reusability. A problem with printed materials is the surface roughness inherently present which could affect the flow in turbines used in rockets. My research is an effort to map the surface profile to the performance of turbines used in rockets.

 I’m the Treasurer of the chapter. I represent the chapter in the Economy Council. I wish to continue the work done by my predecessors with the funds being allocated for activities promoting well-being among the doctoral students at KTH and to create a system such that the funds are easily accessible to the vast majority of our members.

I’m a new PhD student, so I primarily attend classes during the week and mix it up with reading papers for my literature review. I am currently working on a test plan for my experiments. I tend to the financial needs of the members whenever a request is made and I am responsible for accounting all such expenses.

I have my mandate till December 2024. The person who would be my successor would have to be interested in maintaining finances, budgeting the money received from our sponsors and accounting the expenses accurately.

My work revolves around experimental physics in the field of quantum materials. These materials showcase macroscopic phenomena that can only be understood through more advanced quantum mechanics (famous example is superconductors). The goal? Harnessing their unique properties to save energy in new technologies, ultimately lowering the energy consumption of future electronics. In practical terms, my job means frequent travel to various large-scale facilities worldwide—synchrotrons, neutron sources, and muon sources—where I conduct experiments to examine the microscopic physics underlying these phenomena.

As the Education Manager for the Chapter, I handle various aspects of research education at KTH. One significant part involves participating in the Research Education Council, where the research education responsible from each school participates and proposes ideas for improvement. When significant proposals arise, we form work groups to explore them further. Currently, I’m involved in a group examining the possibility of awarding PhD students’ credit for Swedish courses. My aim is for the Research Education Council to have a proposal set before the end of the term. Additionally, I’m working on refining the PhD survey and planning its future administration.

Since I travel a lot for my research for different kinds of experiments, this means my daily routine varies quite a bit depending on where I am. When I’m away for experiments, I spend most of my time in the lab, but I still manage to squeeze in some Chapter tasks during long measurements or in the evenings. I also like to use time at the airport and during flights to catch up on Chapter-related work. However, when I’m back in Stockholm, it’s a more standard office routine, with my research schedule being quite flexible.

I will be finishing up my term as the Education Manager in June 2024. For the next Education Manager, we are looking for someone who is passionate about research education and isn’t afraid to speak their mind or listen to others. It’s a big plus if you are comfortable in Swedish (at least quite a good understanding), as most of the meetings at KTH are in Swedish.

I’m a chemical engineer, with a bachelor’s from UTFPR (Brazil) and a master’s from IPB (Portugal). I moved to Sweden for my PhD two years ago and fell in love with this place! My PhD is in simultaneous crystallization application in the lithium battery recycling process, this means I study crystallization of one or more compounds to improve the recycling process of batteries. Since I’m in my third year I spend half of my time in the lab and the other half writing manuscripts (and fixing stuff to the chapter), but I try to have students to supervise and interns working with me since I believe this is an important part of being in academia! A personal interest of mine is equality and diversity, I advocate for women and minorities in STEM and co-found PhD IMPACT with my supervisor and other PhD students.

I love all kinds of crafts and artsy stuff, but I haven’t done much of those since my bf gave me Star Dew Valley, now I’m a virtual farmer! In summer I bike around the city and am always exploring lakes with nice areas to lie and read. I try to bring my passion for creating to my work too, so I’m always down to create a poster, or and nice email to advertise things I believe are important.

My mandate as communication manager and head of the PhD Equality Network ends in December, and I will be stepping down to focus on my 4^th year. I believe whoever wants to work in this position needs to be passionate about communicating and how spreading information and creating safe spaces can impact your community. If you have that, learning the tools to produce a nice image, or the newsletter, or plan an event is the easier part!

I work with X-rays and components that are necessary for experiments with X-rays. When I say this, most people assume that my research is related to biomedicine, that my samples are people and their bones… Not even close! I make tiny structures in gold that focus X-rays by diffraction. I then use these to illuminate mostly non-biological nanosamples in imaging setups that use multiple illumination spots in parallel to make imaging more efficient. The type of imaging I do is called diffraction imaging: I observe how light scatters on samples, and I interpret diffraction patterns with computer algorithms.

I always thought that my character allowed me to step in and do something for others who did not feel equally comfortable standing up for themselves. Since my last year in Lund, I have been involved in student representation. At KTH I have been chair of the SCI PhD student council. Over the years I gathered experience organizing events and really got to appreciate the impact of these. I love to see how my work enables people to meet, make new friends, try new sports, learn something valuable for the future… This is why I decided to join the Chapter as the event manager and wish to continue organizing events that make PhD students’ lives better.

Work as the event manager goes all the way from coming up with an idea for an event to figuring out the logistics for the event. I talk to my colleagues at the Chapter, decide on what activities I should focus on, and then proceed to communicate with all entities providing the services we need. I book rooms, order food, talk to people to coordinate activities, send out invitations… I am proud of working with DrInk within the Chapter, keeping our pubs alive and offering a recurrent setting for students to socialize, at least once a month, with different themes every time (Karaoke is a must). I am also thrilled to offer more sports to the PhD students of KTH. I am sure many of you are looking forward to skiing in Romme… but that’s just the beginning!

I would like to continue with this role as long as allowed by my PhD contract. I am in my 4^th year and plan on graduating early in 2025. The PhD chapter can count on me thus far, but when it is time for me to step down, the person that follows should be someone motivated, excited about their events and capable of transmitting this excitement. They should be someone capable of communicating with others, easily accessible, and fast at replying to emails. I will be happy to share my experience with them and make sure their mandate starts smoothly!

In my role at the Chapter, I foster connections with research institutes and corporate partners. This collaboration is integral, as it opens doors to exciting opportunities for all of us, and it will bridge the gap between academia and industry.

This summer, I’m excited to organize events that offer both fun and informative experiences, including technical visits to some of the industry’s leading companies. I aim to secure valuable discount partnerships for us all. I’m hoping these ventures will not only be enjoyable but will also strengthen our relationships with companies like Scania, Klarna, Ericsson, Spotify, King, Volvo, ABB, Sinclair, and NorthVolt.

Looking to the future, I would like the person succeeding me to continue fostering these partnerships, uphold the discounts we’ve secured, and maintain the tradition of annual technical visits.

I mainly work in the field called “MLSys” (Machine Learning Systems) by designing scalable machine learning and deep learning systems; this includes approaches, frameworks, and libraries that can enable training large deep neural networks on large datasets and in parallel, on several machines and GPUs. The current mainstream and very successful AI tools are made using clusters and infrastructure that includes thousands of machines, and that is why it’s important to come up with faster and more efficient machine learning systems.

I’m the Council Coordinator, and my responsibility is to attend the Council meetings of different schools and make sure the Chapter Board and the Councils are in sync with each other. I also take care of finding PhD representatives for the Future Faculty (FF) errands – whenever KTH wants to hire, promote, or award docentship to a faculty member, I’ll get an email and then work with the corresponding Council to appoint a suitable PhD representative for that committee. I’m also a Steward of the DrInK group, and help with the events in T-Centralen, especially with our Karaoke Nights.

For the past couple of years I have decided to avoid having meetings or checking emails/Slack before lunch – I tend to focus way better in the mornings. After lunch, I start going through the various mailboxes that I’m responsible of, and make sure we are moving forward with the current FF errands. I also attend the monthly Council meetings of each school and in case of any issues, work with Council members and the Chapter Board members to solve them.

Since my PhD journey is coming to an end (hopefully sometime around the end of this calendar year), I will be stepping down at the end of the current semester. I think anyone with at least a year of experience at school-level councils, and a commitment to attend the various Council meetings, should be able to do a really good job. This has been a very rewarding experience for me, as I got to know way more about how things work in different schools and the central administration.

I work on buildings’ climate impact. I use life cycle assessment as a tool to calculate GHGe from the construction and renovation of buildings. In Europe, life cycle-based regulations are being developed to address buildings’ GHGe and I work on understanding the role of methodology and practical implications in and of such regulations.

I am the chapter’s workgroup manager, myself in some of working group, I am in charge of coordinating the workgroups and ensuring good communication between the working group and the chapter. I am also part of the ABE school PhD board where I help organize events and am the JML representative.