Internal retreat 2026: A look back
The theme of this year's internal retreat was around how to make yourself visible in conferences and to network effectively.
We began the year's event with a talk by guest Nadine Stutz, on "the strength of weak ties", followed by a panel discussion on effective networking, moderated by Zara Malgir and Ilia Shilov and roundtable discussions on experiences at conferences.
After dinner, we were back with the social programme, with the presentation of the winners of the stamp challenge (congratulations to the top three: Cara Koepele, Jan Brändle and Zara Malgir), and the winner of the IEE CSS Swiss Chapter young author award (more on that later...), before moving into the traditional pub quiz evening.
Day two began with a poster session whereby members were invited to present an idea to be persued as part of our theory pathfinder project.
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Following on from the poster presentations, PIs were invited to give short pitches for an idea for NCCR Automation branded special sessions, with breakout sessions afterwards for researchers to join in with each PI's idea.
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After a pause for a lunch break in the autumn sun, it was time for a team building exercise, where we were guided through making a Rube Goldberg machine together.
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On Friday morning we were back with Katrin Baumgärtner and Armin Nurkanović (Universität Freiburg) showing us how to turn code into software, followed by Niklas Schmid presenting some of his outreach and teaching projects, including the ball-on-plate, and finished up with Saverio Bolognani talking about the use of AI in teaching.
