I wanted to start my writing here with a picture I took while my plane was landing to Geneva this January. Since then I’ve been working on my PhD in a new Development and Innovation unit at CERN.
I hit the ground running and joined the teaching team of our first pilot course, Challenge Based Innovation. The first round of CBI was piloting with 17 multidisciplinary master-level students around Europe. The students were sent out with a modest task to develop societally meaningful innovations inspired by CERN research and researchers. Below you can see how this turned out through one of our student videos:
[vimeo 103686297 w=640 h=350]
Now I’m co-coordinating the second round of CBI which has expanded to 45 students from 8 countries, starting from 15th of September with an intensive two week kick-off here at CERN. Aalto University is representing Finland, and at the time of writing they are still collecting applications at http:/aalto.cbi-course.com.
And my PhD topic? I’ve been studying telecommunication, cognitive technology, usability, work psychology, product development and International Design Business Management, packaged into two masters degrees in Aalto University. Now I’m pulling these strings together and focusing my research on multidisciplinary remote collaboration, and especially the (ICT) tools supporting it. CBI and our other projects have been a great possibility to research the topic further, and now Tutkijat Maailmalle -program has allowed me to continue doing this for at least one more year!
Next posts will tell about all the other cool projects I’ve been involved in here so far, down to ‑271.3°C.