07 - Academia or industry? Academia and industry!

One particularity of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITNs is that the Early STage Researchers (ESRs) are 'obliged' to conduct their research with the collaboration of at least at one academic and one industrial partner. Some of us stay most of the time at a University and go for a secondment to a company and some of us do the same but vice versa. My host is Phimeca Engineering in France but I often go to UCD and I actually stayed there for 5 months starting from November 2016 for my secondment. But which one is better? And better for what? For your PhD? For your personal development? For the research itself? I don't promise to give you proper answers in this post, but I will try to spotlight the good side of both.

03 - The main challenges vs the greatest benefits of being a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network Early Stage Researcher (ITN ESR)

(I guess I've just earned the award for the longest blog-post title ever)

In this post I want to share my personal experiences and views. And at first I have to tell that my case is a little bit special, because I came to France without speaking French and because I'm based at a small company in an office with only about 12 people (moreover who are all French).