A very special school. The first gathering ever for all teams (ESRs and supervisors) thanks to the ease of COVID restriction. A scientifically rich program with a lot of social activities in the calm and beautiful district of Løten, Norway.
Science:
Artificial intelligence (AI) course by Jurica Šprem
1 - Theory:
An overview on the history and beginning of AI.
The landmark applications in the field of medical imaging.
The challenges and requirements of a successful machine learning algorithm such as domain knowledge, good quality data.
2 - Hands on sessions, Hackathon:
ESRs were divided into 3 groups, 2 group in each.
The aim of the project was developing an automatic algorithm for the identification of a given echocardiographic view (such as 4CH(4 chamber) , 3CH, 2CH).
Over the following couple of days, the groups worked on the given project with the help of Jurica Šprem the results were discussed with Prof. Jan D’hooge with very valuable feed back and action point for further improvements.
The ESRs gained a lot of knowledge from this project despite coming from different disciplines. The engineers learned about the different views of echocardiography, how to identify them and what are the cardiac structures in each view, while ESRs from medical and physiological backgrounds gained a good insight in the basics of AI, coding, and commonly used terms in that field.
Poster presentation
The ESRs have individually presented their work in the form of a printed poster.
The posters had the same layout and were hanged on the on the wall next to each other, which gave the same environment of a professional poster presentation in an international congress.
Each ESR presented his/her poster to the rest of the group and got the feedback from the others specially from more experienced attendees like Joost Lumens, Kristen Mc Leod and Jurica Šprem.
Secondment plan
Since the COVID restrictions markedly affected travel and mobility, a dedicated session has been held to discuss the secondment plan of each ESR and any needed modification.
Story telling course
Tara Philips who is an experienced TEDx speech couch gave a 4-hour course on storytelling, which is a very useful tool for a scientist to present his/her work, to convince attendees with his ideas or to apply for future grants.
The course had three parts:
The theory and introduction.
Physical and mental preparations before giving a speech or a talk.
Individual story exercise: Each ESR has to prepare a 3-minute story using the skills that he/she learned from the course and tell the story to the rest of the team an note the feedback.
Social activities:
For a whole week the teams shared the same place, meaning that different types of authentic food have been cooked.
Walks in the nature, in Oslo city centre and talks among the team have created a tight social bonding that not only resulted in making long-life friendships but also would have a very strong positive influence on the progress of the work and the results of the whole project.
Big Thank you to organizers of the summer school specially for Kristin McLeod.
Big Thank you to Christiana Tiago who spent a lot of time preparing quizzes and fun games for the rest of the team, that was very successful.