ARTs, IDEAs, ENGINEERing, NETWORKing

Guter Beitrag von Univ.-Prof. Hubert Lengauer (Vizerektor der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt):

(aus advantage)

Die European Career Fair (ECF) ist die größte Karrieremesse mit Fokus auf den europäischen Arbeitsmarkt in Nordamerika und in ihrer Art einzigartig. Die Messe zieht jedes Jahr tausende BesucherInnen („Candidates“) an und ermöglicht den Ausstellern („Employers“) den direkten Kontakt mit hervorragenden AbsolventInnen von amerikanischen Top-Universitäten und Institutionen. Die ECF wird jährlich (seit 1997) am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) vom MIT European Club veranstaltet. Seit 2007 gibt es neben den klassischen "Companies" auch eine eigene "Science & Technology Section", in der speziell Non-Profit Unternehmen, wie zum Beispiel auch brainpower austria, auftreten. Die Messe ist eine großartige Gelegenheit für europäische Unternehmen, junge Talente und erfahrene ForscherInnen anzusprechen und direkt vor Ort Bewerbungsgespräche zu führen.

brainpower austria - der erste österreichische Beitrag

Bei der ECF 2008 präsentierte brainpower austria am eigenen Messestand eine Auswahl an österreichischen Jobanbietern und aktuellen F&E-Jobs in einer eigenen Messebroschüre, die insgesamt von 22 österreichischen F&E-Institutionen als Plattform genutzt wurde. Darunter finden sich renommierte Namen wie IMP, IMBA, Siemens, Infineon, Böhler-Uddeholm, Austrian Research Centers und große Universitäten. Die MessebesucherInnen konnten auch direkt vor Ort unsere F&E-Online Jobbörse benutzen und sich über alle kostenlosen Serviceleistungen von brainpower austria informieren.

Looking back at my last report about the European Career Fair (ECF) and further developments of my project MIT-Austria (previous article), I am now pleased to offer you some insight from the point of view of one of the presenters at the ECF 2008 at MIT:

Stefan Eichenberger, Program Manager of Brainpower-Austria

“As Austria’s first representative I participated in the 2008 MIT
European Career Fair, representing „brainpower austria“, a non-profit
program presented in the ECF’s Science & Technology Section.
brainpower austria is a program of Austria’s Federal Ministry of
Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit), managed by the Austrian
Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Structural Programs Division.

I found the ECF as very well organized and was quite impressed by the
large number of registered candidates from all over the world. The whole
fair day kept me busy and I had the chance to speak to many motivated
people about their concerns and ideas about a research career. It was
mainly Europeans who stepped up to the brainpower austria booth but also
Americans and people from other countries as well asked about our
services and opportunities in R&D in Austria. There was also a number of
Austrians who attended the fair and warmly welcomed the idea of Austria
finally participating in an event like this.

One of our major services is our online job listings that are used by many Austrian employers to
post their R&D vacancies. At the fair booth people could browse the
listing and take a brochure including a selection of 22 Austrian
employers, with current open positions.

I think the ECF is a unique opportunity to get in contact with a lot of highly qualified academics
and establish ties with (Austrian) employers. I’m happy we made this
step, and I have to say it was a good start! We plan to extend this
co-operation and also encourage Austrian employers to be part of the ECF
themselves. Regarding the Austrians, I was happy to see some familiar
faces and to meet new ones, like DI Daniel Pressl. It’s great to see young
talented researchers who want to change things and get things started,
like Daniel and his MIT-Austria program.”

Recent: Standard.at Artikel vom 12.Feber.2008 ueber die ECF 2008

Two weeks ago I spent an entire weekend (02. Feb. – 03. Feb.) visiting the European Career Fair (ECF) at MIT. In early December, last year, I contacted many Austrian companies to possibly find a spot at the fair. Unfortunately, I was not fast enough to be able to get in touch before the deadline for the companies to apply at the ECF, which was the 14th of December, 2007. However, I promoted the future concept of an MIT-Austria cooperation and introduced the idea of the ECF:

An optimal opportunity for any company to present itself in a professional environment such as the MIT campus. In 2007 more than 4000 students submitted their resumes to be selected by one of the many (more than 100) companies that presented themselves in 2007 at the European Career Fair.

Furthermore, companies will receive the opportunity to speak to the MISTI staff on how to present their company throughout the year at MIT. For example, the program MIT-Germany has already been established and many companies, such as Lufthansa are holding workshops at MIT all year long to recruit the best students for their company needs and future.

Germany was huge at this year’s ECF.

More infos at http://ipressl.com/Exchange.html and https://www.euro-career.com/.

General Electrics booth at the ECF 2008. After I showed them my CV and had a conversation about their company and company’s projects and goals. They are still smiling!

Meanwhile, the MIT-Austria idea has found frutation in the region Carinthia, in Austria, where currently an office is being established. This office will be one of the primary positions in Austria to be in contact with MISTI, an organization at MIT, which “offers tailored, hands-on internships abroad for MIT students, study abroad opportunities, short-term workshops and language courses abroad, and funding for collaborative research between MIT faculty and international colleagues”.

The first steps of the MIT-Austria office will be the creation of an MIT-Austria forum inside the already existing MIT-Germany program. Future milestones of the forum will be to establish a idea of the country Austria and its companies in the eyes students at MIT, so they will have an idea of the many possibilities that are available in Austria.
At the same time, the MIT-Austria office will start contacting companies (profit and non-profit), as well as research facilities (universities,…) to become a partner of the MIT-Austria forum and offer spaces for MIT students to come to Austria for their research.
Other concepts of such a program are the exchange of use of research facilities and therefore the publication of papers. Furthermore, it can be possible for students and researchers in Austria to go to MIT for some time, as visiting students.

I, myself, already had two visiting students in my lab and, I believe, both sides shared a great experience (link to Austrian newspaper article on a website that I have created on the social networking site www.Redwired.org, where I constantly post new stories about my works between MIT and Austria).

Booth of the Netherlands Institute of Metals Research at the ECF 2008. I also listened to their talk, which was a very interesting excerpt of life of a successful and growing research facility in Europe.

Back to the ECF, it was a pleasure to find an Austrian booth at this years ECF, the first Austrian booth ever! The booth was lead by the team brainpower-austria. Brainpower-austria was presenting a folder and information of 22 companies with open R & D positions, as well as a talk, which was mainly visited by Austrians, but it is a start and a great one! I sat in the talk and met Stefan Eichenberger, who is the is program manager of brainpower-austria:

I told him what a great pleasure it was for me to see an Austrian booth at the ECF, after having fought for one, back in 2007. I immediately, while walking back to his booth, introduced him to the idea of MIT-Austria and MISTI and he was very interested. At the ECF, I also met Philipp Marxgut, who is the Director and Attache for Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria, in Washington, DC.

I managed to organize a short meeting between Stefan Eichenberger, Philip Marxgut, Sigrid Berka (Coordinator of MIT-Germany) and myself. Certainly, the outcome was very motivating and I will meet Stefan and the entire team of brainpower-austria at the end of March, when I am back in Austria, to speak about further plans of MIT-Austria and a possible collaboration with brainpower-austria.

A few more images of this year’s ECF at MIT:

Siemens booth at the ECF 2008. I was amazed to find out that one of the coordinators of the booth (and leader of the Materials Department) knew one of my former Professors from the Montanuniversitaet in Leoben, Austria.

The very busy Lufthansa booth at the ECF 2008. Lufthansa is huge at MIT, every month I at least get one email from Lufthansa, asking if I am a scientist interested in aviation, speak german and want to work for them.

Impressions of this year’s ECF 2008 at MIT. The booth show took place in the Athletics Center.

The live streams have been an accompanying feature of MIT-Austria events, such as the 2fast4u High-Speed Photography exhibition, where visitors at the exhibition in Austria could communicate live with students at MIT.

The site at this time was www.redwired.org/tmp/2fast4u and we had 6 feeds running (meaning six cameras!) with 3 booths, where the users could also talk to each other and take snapshots of the different views of the cameras. Screenshots of the feed website can be found here.

At this time there are only two more feeds running: One at MIT, in building 4 in the basement, looking out the windows. The other one sits on a table on the 3rd floor in the Stiftsgymnasium St. Paul in Austria, viewing a former project of the school. The little house can be remotley controlled over the web:

…

European Career Fair @ MIT

2 – 4 February, 2008

…

An optimal opportunity for any company to present itself in a professional environment such as the MIT campus!: In 2007 more than 4000 students submitted their resumes to be selected by one of the many (more than 100) companies that presented themselves in 2007 at the European Career Fair.

. ..
Furthermore, companies will receive the opportunity to speak to the MISTI staff on how to present their company throughout the year at MIT. For example, the program MIT-Germany has already been established and many companies, such as Lufthansa are holding workshops at MIT all year long to recruit the best students for their company needs and future.

…

MIT-Austria Company BONUS: This will be the first event leading towards the realization of our program and for Austrian companies to set foot on the MIT campus, which will be very beneficial for the future of MIT-Austria. If your company should decide to become a member of MIT-Austria, there is a chance that your company can receive a reimbursement of the registration cost of the fair, as well as other costs.

…

Please contact DI Daniel Pressl with any questions regarding MIT-Austria or the European Career Fair under Contact and be quick, the deadline is the 14th of December 2007.

TripleM, Montanuniversität Leoben (Ausgabe 4, 2007)

Erfahrungsbericht eines Visiting Students am MIT, im Labor von DI Daniel Pressl – Laura Droessler

at the Edgerton Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In collaboration with a new initiative from Austria in Europe, the MIT Edgerton Outreach program is working on a new project, Cineatrix. The original idea stemmed from the knowledge that there is a new generation of children who are digital natives, kids who haven’t known a world without iPods and digital cameras, let alone a comfort level with computers. An MIT student from Austria, Daniel Pressl, is now working on a new idea for the project, Cineatrix. This will combine film, theater and comics. There are two main thoughts to the program.

First and foremost, as a means of story-telling, children will be able to take movies, add special effects to the movies and be able to tell their stories in never imagined ways. The goal for the end of the course is every child will be able to bring a DVD home, to which they have contributed through filming, editing or storytelling.

The second aim is that children, between 10 and 15 years old, get to teach their technological know-how in media and videography to children between 5 and 10. This extraordinary, media-pedagogical concept has proven to show great possibilities and a new way of learning for children and has been running for the past 4 years, in Austria. We run parallel sessions in which the older children are trained on our particular hardware/software to do the filming, editing and other finishing stages, and have the older children then turn around and teach these same skills to the Storytellers, the younger children.

MIT-Austria Redwired Website

This MIT-Austria Exchange Organization has not been founded yet. However, there are a few students from Austria, who made it to the reputable Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the number is increasing:

Peter Wagner (MIT, Fall 2006); Triple M, Montanuniversitaet Leoben)

UPDATE:

Further students: Laura Droessler (MIT, Fall 2007), Andreas Maier (MIT, Fall 2007), Bernhard Heine (MIT, Fall 2007 and Spring 2008), Markus Dohr (Spring 2008)

The invited students receive the status of visiting student or interns.

There are organizations that already lead large student exchanges. However, it certainly is not an easy task, if possible at all, to get into the best engineering schools in the world and MIT is one of them.

To have a contact at such a university is certainly a big advantage and that is what this Organization will try to strengthen at the first place, to strengthen the global bonds between Austria’s universities and companies with international universities that Austrian students usually can only dream of.

Later on, after enlarging this network and receiving great feedback from both sides, we would like to go further ways and possibly form a well-known student exchange organization.

The researchers and students from Austria are certainly no less intelligent or gifted than students from other places around the world. Let’s show that to everyone!

Furthermore, the MIT-Austria program should be a harbor for projects that are collaborations between MIT and Austria.