The 4th TIDES Advanced Training School was held in Prague, Czech Republic, from the 2nd to the 6th of July 2018. If you missed it, take a look at Michaela and Eric’s short report:
Eric Loeberich
It’s the first Sunday of July. It could have been a calm sunny noon in Vienna, but that’s not my plan for today, I’ve to catch a train in 45 minutes! I check the room, take my luggage, ready to start my journey. The next week will be pretty interesting, TIDES (Time Dependent Seismology), an action supported by the COST Association (European funded framework aiming at an enhanced transnational cooperation within the science community), organizes an advanced training school in Prague. What a great opportunity to widen my knowledge and to establish contacts with other early career scientists (ECS) and seismic experts! I’m sure to meet familiar faces… One of them is Michaela. We already attended some workshops together and since this year we are both part of the ECS-representatives team.“
Michaela Wenner
After a turbulent week of fieldwork, my journey continues to Prague to attend the TIDES training school. This year’s topic is ‘near surface processes’, which perfectly fits my current research project. Near surface processes often include a lot of fieldwork, as does my PhD, but during this week I hope to sit back and listen to the most experienced people in the community. An airport full of ryan-air tourists makes me saying goodbye to my city quite easy and I’m curious what Prague has to offer. As Eric, I am happy to see some of the people I had the pleasure to meet during my short career but haven’t seen in a while.“
Sunset in Prague – © Eric Loeberich
The kind of creepy forest – especially by night without lights – leading up to the hotel sets a beautiful scenery for the conference. Many nights of networking on the terrace lie ahead of us – after a dense scientific program, of course. Indeed, the expert talks about earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciers, landslides, reservoirs, cities and other near surface processes gave a good overview on current knowledge and advances in these fields.
Cutting edge science – mostly by ECS – was then presented in the afternoons in short talks and posters. And after work follows the fun – at TIDES 2018 in the form of concerts, drinks and tango lessons. We have the impression that even though we heard many interesting talks and discussed our research, the training school was mostly based on networking. One attempt to include the trainees better into the discussions was conducted via a question hour after lunch. Basically groups of four trainees had to discuss the morning talks over lunch and come up with questions. This was at first met with not too much enthusiasm amongst the trainees, but turned out to be quite interesting with many answered questions.
All in all, we had a great time in Prague and are sad to see that this was the last training school within the TIDES action. We hope that there will be similar programmes soon, that allow ECS to get a better idea of what is going on within the community and to network with potential collaborators.
This post was written by Michaela Wenner and Eric Loeberich, with revisions from Marina Corradini
Michaela Wenner is a PhD student at ETH Zurich. She works on seismic signals of mass movements, such as rockfalls, debris flows and ice avalanches. You can reach her at wenner[at]vaw.baug.ethz.ch
Eric Loeberich is a PhD student at the University of Vienna. He works on seismic anisotropy in the upper mantle, as produced by lattice-preferred orientation of olivine in lithosphere and asthenosphere. You can reach him at: eric.loeberich[at]univie.ac.at
