What's
Jun 5. 2025
Eyes4ICU Winter School: A Point of Career Reflection
The third Eyes4ICU Winter School took place from 7 to 11 April 2025 at the beautiful Smolenice Castle in Slovakia. It brought together PhD students from many different European countries, including Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Finland, and Poland. At the winter school, they had the opportunity to spend some time with the whole project consortium, including their supervisors and partners of the project. We at KInIT are proud to have had the opportunity to organise this wonderful event full of lively discussions, helpful workshops, and many social activities. We would like to share with you how the members of our team enjoyed themselves and what memorable moments they took away with them.
The Interdisciplinary Community
“It’s amazing that we’re bringing together scientists from different fields – being here together, having fun and doing science, and helping out society all at once. We ask each other interesting questions and see how various disciplines attack these problems from different angles, and then in cooperation. The people here are great – it doesn’t matter whether we’re working together or going on a hike, it’s always a great time!”
Santiago de Leon, PhD student at KInIT
Exploring Different Cultures
“It’s actually very exciting for me. It’s always good to see such talented people all together and then interacting with their supervisors from all the different cultures and nationalities. So it’s very nice to observe it and to absorb the energy. It’s a great experience and I’m very grateful to be here.”
Diana Lokere, People & Culture Officer at KInIT
Building New Friendships
“For me, it means expanding my network, creating not only professional contacts but deeper friendships. And as we also learnt during one of the training sessions at the winter school, you never know where this will lead you, but you should leave some space for randomness and for luck to come, to shape your shared future.”
Róbert Móro, Researcher at KInIT
Knowledge exchange
“This project has a great multidisciplinary team, the finest I’ve ever experienced. I strongly believe that mentorship is one of the greatest things in the work of any researcher. It’s not only about sharing your experience and knowledge, but also about being influenced by the young people, so I truly love it here.”
Mária Bieliková, CEO at KInIT
Meetings Fueling Innovation
“The organisation of such training seminars is a great opportunity for PhD students to meet academic partners, people from the educational environment, but also to meet our partners from industry. At the same time, it is a great experience to interact with each other, to share their views and insights, and to support each other in the research they are doing.”
Paulína Števíková, Project Administrator at KInIT
What Lies Ahead
“The consortium of this project is made up of people who are very close to each other in terms of research. The PhD students in Eyes4ICU are facing important life decisions. Many of them are at the stage where they should start publishing and have results. Therefore, they are already thinking about what their career will look like after their PhD, which we also focused on during this event. We talked about how to do well in a job interview, and during a panel discussion with the supervisors, we discussed how was their academic journey.”
Jakub Šimko, Researcher at KInIT
A massive thank you belongs to everyone who attended and made this event an unforgettable experinece! We look forward to meeting all of the bright people working on Eyes4ICU project again!
