Semesterstart Meeting in Oslo

 Six students were presents, some new and some in their final stages of their PhD. Present were: Hilde Notø (STAMI), Paz Lopez-Doriga Ruiz (FHI), Stine Fossum (UiO), Ola Nakken (UiO), Fareeha Shaikh (UiO) and Lars Christian Bråten (FORMI). The local representatives were also present; professor Per Nafstad, professor Magne Thoresen and Line Løw.

Topic of the day was “Personal experience with dissertation as OPPONENT”. Professor Haakon Meyer, an experienced epidemiologist was the speaker. Haakon Meyer has vast experience as an opponent. He told about his experiences and he gave a lot of excellent advices. He split his talk into three parts, discussing the written thesis, the trial lecture and the oral defense. There was a nice discussion around the table. During the semester start meeting it was also given information from EPINOR by the local administrative contact Line and about upcoming events like NOFE and EPINOR Annual Meeting from the student representative Paz.

We also discussed that a lot of EPINOR students in Oslo are now in their final stages of PhD, and will have their oral defense within the next 6-8 month. The Oslo network has been very good and some of the students have been very active, so how can we keep the network going when most of the students will submit and defend the upcoming year? How can we engage the new batch of students that were recruited in 2016 more in our local activities? And finally how can we recruit new students to the EPINOR network? The questions are still there to be answered but we will discuss this further through the autumn semester.