YEEES Vienna PhD Day

Organized by: Student Chapter of the Austrian Association for Energy Economics

Date & venue: March 2013, Vienna, TU Wien

The aim of the event, as expressed in the call for papers, was to give PhD-students the opportunity to present their work in detail including a comprehensive feedback of senior researchers and professors in the field of energy economics.

For myself it was a very positive experience, for many reasons, I’d like to share my impression and recommend it to other fellow PhD students;

• It is a great opportunity to present work in progress or a research paper and get very valuable feedback. The feedback is not only from professors, but also from peers, so you get inputs from researchers in the same field or using the same methodologies.
• As other researchers present their work, you get ideas from methodologies or approaches and get additional contacts for the development of your work, as well as inputs from informal exchanges.
• A seminar gets you away from daily work and research, where you might think new ideas for your work. You might also get interest in additional research and innovative topics.
• As in my case, research is quite «lonesome», getting together with fellow PhD students who share similar difficulties is motivational.
• ..and of course it’ an opportunity to go out for dinner, some drinks and enjoy.

I’m more used to commercial congresses and conferences, so it was quite different, without the sales pressure and time stress to get business contacts and leads. If anything I missed was an additional entrepreneurial spin to orient research to business.

In short, it was a great and useful experience and highly recommended.