Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy: Symposium 2018

I find it hard to wrap my head around how I am feeling as the train slowly sets off from Waverley station on what is probably my last official visit to Edinburgh as an Industrial Doctoral Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE) student. Proud of the work I have completed over the last three-and-a-bit years. Terrified at the prospect of trying to summarise it all in a remotely coherent way and submit by the end of the summer. Sad that I won’t get to come back to this beautiful city and see my fellow IDCORE-ians as frequently. Excited at the thought of the graduation celebrations with these fantastic friends that is, le cúnamh Dé, just around the corner.

Ben Hudson

It was a brilliant day last Friday at the 2018 IDCORE Symposium – the 3rd instalment of the student-led conference – full of informative posters and presentations, showcasing the diversity of industrial projects being carried out by various IDCORE researchers scattered around the country. I was given the opportunity to summarise some thesis work that I have been agonising over for the last month or so, presenting on the phenomenon of Learning Curves for marine operations. This research coincides with the sophisticated new learning module that has recently been incorporated in the Gamer Mode.

The standard of posters and presentations, and the huge variation of research questions being tackled, were a credit to the doctoral centre and the symposium committee. Cameron McNatt, co-founder of the promising wave energy start-up company Mocean Energy and keynote speaker at the conference, was particularly inspiring and a definite highlight. It was fitting as well then, that Dr Sunny Shah, who has recently completed his thesis and passed his EngD viva, ended the conference with an informal chat entitled ‘Life after the EngD’. His prepending of ‘There is’ to the title, offered with various bits of advice for the final stages of the degree, resonated loudly with me. Especially with the deadline of August 31st approaching at a scarcely believable speed… Now back to my thesis.