TANGO Mid-Term Meeting

TANGO mid-term meeting

Univ. Keele – 18-19 September 2014

Comments by C. Schram

Coordinator’s report

Structure of the WPs shows strong interconnections between Tasks, hence between fellows and partners. Now this should be substantiated through secondments, triggering joint publications where possible. Excellent training offer, gathering trainers from the consortium as well as external experts, offering excellent exposure of the fellows to international knowledge beyond the network’s expertise. Currently the trainings aren’t evaluated by the fellows. This could be organized for future trainings, using a common form to be filled anonymously by the fellows right after the training or later.

Good exposure of the TANGO fellows in conferences, with positive feedback from external experts. Publications could be listed on the web page (not the case as of today) where copyright allows. Recruitment mostly completed on time. Recruitment problems not surprising given the international recruitment base and eligibility criteria.

Outreach event “Science Market”: excellent (and significant) effort to vulgarize TANGO research and promote scientific career track towards 40 pupils.

Outreach charity event India: distribution of 600 teaching materials. Impressive!

Associated Partners: strong involvement for training in complementary skills (Science Museum in Munich organized a training event), Sontech hosting secondments, or registration universities in the case of PhDs hosted by research centres / industries. Only a few Associated Partners don’t show active participation to the network. Additional Associated Partners can be easily included in the project.

Secondments up to 2 months are foreseen in Annex I, longer or more numerous secondments could be advisable. In any case, trans-sectorial (industry-academia) secondments are highly recommended.

Project monitoring w/r to milestones and deliverables

Insufficient evidence provided by the consortium as to whether the deliverables and milestones are on track or not at this stage of the project. The consortium could provide a short review of the deliverables and milestones due so far, their status and a short (not too technical) explanation of the reasons for delays, re-shuffling priorities, etc. Some valuable information was provided by the consortium about the progress of the individual projects, but not addressing the progress of the project as a whole. After discussing with the fellows and scientists-in-charge, it appears however that the project is well on track despite the late recruitments. Financial aspects

No particular remark. Progress report by the fellows

Task 1.1 (Luck Peerling, KTH): good scientific quality, could potentially open a new way to work on aero- acoustic or thermo-acoustic instabilities without the hassle associated with combustion, good involvement with industrial partner IfTA (mainly on flow-acoustic feedback). Task 1.2 (Wei Na, KTH): interesting, though not completely clear what she would do. No secondment in industry planned apparently. Task 1.3 (Jonathan Tournadre, LMS): registered at KULeuven (Associated Partner, strong involvement by providing experimental rig), impressive numerical work with experimental component as well, very complete PhD program. Good interactions with fellows from other ITN projects (e.g. FLOWAIRS) at LMS. Secondments not yet defined. Task 2.2 (Nalini Kanta Mukherjee, Keele Univ.): good complementarity between numerical and experimental works. Cooperation with IIT Madras. Planned secondment at LMS currently on hold. Nalini has already a strong industrial expertise, and what he’s lacking is more expertise in experimental diagnostics. Tasl 2.4 (Alp Albayrak, TUM): good mix between theoretical and numerical work. Secondment planned in IIT Madras to get acquainted with experimental work. Task 2.5 (Alessandra Bigongiari, Univ. Keele): own scientific task + scientific coordination task. Academic position, complemented by a secondment in industry (Ansaldo). Task 3.1 (Driek Rounwenhorst, IfTA): secondments still to be defined. Good connection with the business development aspects of the company. Task 3.2 (Muttalip Askin Temiz, TUe): numerical, experimental and theoretical components. Has already performed secondments. Very interesting work. Great presentation skills. Task 3.3 (Aswathy Surendran, Univ. Keele): excellent basis of compulsory training (research management, oral presentation, doctoral progression, etc.). Academic position with secondment at industry (Beckaert). Task ? (Lin Strobio Chen, TUM): again, excellent mix of theoretical, numerical and experimental work. Secondments at academia and industry. Task 3.5 (Naseh Hosseini, Bekaert): had a kick-off at TUe, good academic starting point before starting in industry. Good connections with other fellows in the network. Very good integration in the industrial context of the company. Task 3.7( Dmytro Iurashev, Ansaldo): good connections with academic partners (Keele, Genoa). Management aspects

Given the difficulties faced by IIT Madras to recruit their fellows (in good part due to visa issues), a plan B could consist in having the budget transferred to another partner. In any case, no other Master students should be recruited in the consortium. A milestone should be defined to trigger such plan B relatively soon (e.g. in 2 months). Otherwise, remedial actions will become increasingly difficult to implement. General comments

Strong involvement of industrial sector: 1) having strong expectations, and therefore justifying the existence of the TANGO project;

2) very active too, by recruitment of fellows and organization of secondments. Inspiring example for the fellows: IfTA, could for example be used to give a presentation on the accumulated experience in setting up a research-based business (excellent: actually planned in Autumn 2015!). Web site very complete: all information you’d expect to find in the DoW is accessible in an intuitive way (except for publications, as noted above). List of available on-line lectures quite impressive. Web site much more than a dissemination tool (important enough already), but real training tool.

Comments after the fellows presentations: First of all, the fellows exhibit in general excellent presentation skills, in good part acquired during their stay in TANGO as noted by some. All fellows have already received a very substantial amount of trainings, with a very strong proportion of complementary skills (IPR, research management, …). It is also remarkable that at this early stage of their research, they are already quite aware of the global scientific issues in the TANGO field, demonstrating intense scientific cooperation within the network. Each fellow has already presented at least 1 conference paper, which demonstrates an excellent early start across the whole consortium. The planned secondments generally fulfill the multi-sectoral and multi- disciplinary mission. They could be lengthened, or fractioned to enhance the benefits. My suggestion is that whenever possible, the secondments could be substantiated through joint publications. Concerning the fellows carrying out their research in industry, it is very satisfactory to see that their work is integrated in the company activities and addressing issues that will have a very significant impact in terms of competitiveness.