WIAS PhD Group
Apes together strong.
To the website of the group of PhD students at the Weierstrass-Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics!
As announced, I – Daniel Runge – will relinquish my role as PhD representative come April. Willem van Oosterhout will keep his role for a while longer and provide some continuity (and of course I will also still be around to help along 🙂).
If you would like to throw your hat into the ring and be part of the representative team, please put your name into the open list of candidates by 31.03.2024 by 08.04.2024.
We get it – we're all constantly busy with all kinds of stuff. Doing a PhD is already a challenge and now we're supposed to do more work for everyone else? And what kind of stuff are you supposed to do then anyway? Here is our account of what kind of things we think a PhD Rep role involves. But that is just our idea of it. You can always make your own personal mark!
| Date | Contribution |
|---|---|
| 13.05.2024 | César Zarco Romero (RG 5) TBA |
| 15.04.2024 Moved from 08.04.! | Wilfried Kenmoe Nzali (RG 6) Volatile Electricity Markets and Battery Storage Abstract: In this work, we model a volatile electricity market in combination with a Stationary Battery Storage Device (SBSD) to reduce consumer costs. We use stochastic optimal control to manage charging and discharging of the SBSD. Our goal is a mathematical tool for consumers to cut energy expenses by integrating battery storage where we assume no market-wide impact. Initially, we focus on formulating a stochastic optimal control problem for continuous charging and discharging, considering factors like electricity prices and battery conditions. |
The PhD lunch is still alive and happening regularly! 🌮
Every Tuesday at 13:00, you are happily invited to join us for lunch! We meet in front of the entry to the main building! 🥪
As a result of the employee survey (Mitarbeiterbefragung MAB), a committee was set in place to develop appropriate measures for improving the working conditions at the institute.
One outgrowth of that was to institute a buddy group of volunteers who meet up monthly to offer a platform for discussing challenges and filling general gaps for newcomers to the WIAS.
See also:
the MAB committee's webpage (only reachable from within the WIAS via e.g. VPN)
You may have heard through the grapevine that the infamous WissZeitVG is currently in the process of being reformed.
While some suggestions seem to actually constitute an improvement - such as the plan to mandate (within limits) three-year contracts for newly hired PhDs - other parts of it have caused quite a stir in the German academic world. Most notably, the plan is to limit the maximum post-doc employment period under fixed-term contracts to only 3 years.
This has been met with severe criticism by labor unions, some research organizations and even professors who regard this development as significant in impacting the working conditions in academia in a negative fashion.
If you are interested in reading more about the general background and recent developments, especially from an English-speaking point of view, check out the following links:
Leibniz PostDoc Network: a network of postdoc scientists within the Leibniz Association engaging in information gathering, communcation, and advocacy.
#ProfsFürHanna: an alliance of professors who have co-signed an open letter calling for the revision of the proposed amendments to the WissZeitVG.
GEW [German]: Educators' and Scientists' Labor Union providing some details on the proposed amendments and reactions to them in German.
NGA - Network for Decent Labor in Academia [mostly German]: a network of mid-level academics in Germany engaged in information-gathering and advocacy for better working conditions in academia.
For German sources, we warmly recommend running bits of text through the DeepL Translator.
