ESR11 Development of methods for risk assessment of wind turbine support structures and bridges

Summer2018, with its wonderful weather which was rare in Denmark, was fantastic! We were the host of last INFARASTAR training at Aalborg University where I am studying there. This time, it was a bit different as it was the midterm review meeting as well as usual presentations.  All ESRs were supposed to give a presentation about their own Ph.D. and the reviewer from the Research Executive Agency gave us her comments.  Among all presentations, which each of them had their own value, a presentation by  Christian Clergue was so practical from my point of view, as we have learned how we should write a good CV, how we should manage an interview and many other skills to get a new job after Ph.D.  I hope in our last gathering in the last Implementation Day, we could again have the opportunity to know more tips to apply for a new job by a presentation as it will be near the end of Ph.D. of most of us and would be useful. Same as others, I also have presented ...

I became so refreshed after a long holiday back home; it was the best holiday ever, as I had my wedding party! Besides, I had my first oral presentation during my Ph.D. at the fifth International Reliability and Safety Engineering Conference (IRSEC 2018) in Shiraz, the city of poets, literature, and flowers in Iran. I have presented two papers there: Comparative Investigation of Uncertainty Analysis with Different Methodologies on Fatigue Data of Rebars Sima Rastayesh, Amol Mankar, John Dalsgaard Sørensen Sensitivity and Identifiability Study for Uncertainty Analysis of Material Model for Concrete Fatigue Amol Mankar, Sima Rastayesh, John Dalsgaard Sørensen My first Paper was selected to be published in the International Journal of Reliability, Risk, and Safety: Theory and Application, among a competition between other papers. After I came back from holiday I participated in a course by JCSS, at Aalborg University with the title “System Risk Modelling and Analysis in ...

At Aalborg University, Ph.D. students should have a mini-defense of their work, which means they should present what they have done so far and what they have plan to do for the rest of their Ph.D., I also had this seminar. During my secondment, I tried to prepare myself for this presentation, which made me a bit stressful at that moment. It was a fantastic experience as it simulated a semi-defense for me. The questions of my reviewer helped me to stay on the track of my Ph.D. topic, especially to balance my publications and not to be so optimistic for many publications. After my seminar, I have participated in the first implementation of our project! I think for all ESRs took a bit time to really understand what will be happened in the implementation day, what are the expectations and what is the aim of these implementations and even more questions. In each implementation day, each work package should present their work. The feedback from industries isreally helpful, espec...

Being at IFSTTAR for my first secondment was a great experience I could ever had as part of my Ph.D. and life; besides living in Paris for two months, I had wonderful networking opportunities there. I started my secondment before Christmas holiday, it was nice to see French culture and food for the New Year and spending the holiday in Paris. I was working there with Maria Nesterova (ESR6) and I had the chance to have the guidance of Franziska Schmidt at IFSTTAR. I had a challenge at the beginning when I wanted to start with the planned program I had before I go to IFSTTAR, There were lots of lessons I had learned at this stage. First of all, we need to have at least three meetings before going to a secondment to be sure everything will match our interest, available data and etc. Secondly, would be good to study those contents you will work on them as part of your study during the secondment that you are not still familiar with in advance. This will help you to save time, as us...

One of the advantages of our project is that we have three trainings, which will help each ESR in their project, as they will gain a lot of knowledge related to their Ph.D. topic there. We have three work packages in our project; it is organized like that we will be familiar with the whole idea of each package during training as well as our own package. Each ESR has to give a presentation about their work to let others know about their progress and topic of their Ph.D. It is a good opportunity to find an idea to cooperate with each other. This time we had time to work on a group on a topic with another ESR from a different work package. I had cooperation with another ESR at IFSTTAR where I have a secondment there, Mariia Nesterova (ESR6). During training, besides all the lectures, there was another lecture or I can say another activity held by a guy from industry which was so beneficial for all of us to learn how a good team working can be and how we can improve it. ...

I would like to share my experience in this post about participating in COST TU1402 Training School on the Value of Structural Health Monitoring Information in Italy. This training had a scholarship and for me, it was the first time to apply for such training. I highly recommend all Ph.D. students and researchers to have networking with people who are in their field of study to be informed about such training. Thus, you will gain a lot of  experiences from the beginning steps until the end. -         You will learn how to write a motivation letter for such positions. You will update your CV in these cases if you have forgotten to. (I also recommend you to keep your CV update all the time) -         First part of the training was a great opportunity for me because the content of the lectures in the training was along with my Ph.D. with prestigious professors. Series of lectures were well-organized; mo...