This year’s Nanolund student retreat in Höllviken had more than 85 student members, PhD students, and postdocs participating, taking the prize of the most attended retreat so far! The theme of the retreat was “Industry versus Academia”, and included speakers sharing their expertise, personal experiences, and different perspectives from both worlds of academia and industry.  

The retreat started with the dean of LTH, Annika Olsson, sharing her thoughts from working both within a company and academia, followed by Luke Hankin, the Head of Lund Nano Lab, with experience working in companies and start-ups.

We had presentations by Marie Bermeo, PhD student at Solid State Physics with previous experience from working in the industry, and Jens Uhlig, education coordinator at NanoLund and initiator of the NanoLund mentoring program starting this winter. From the industry perspective, Matthias Burza and Roger Wigren from Veoneer talked about in which ways a PhD degree can be valuable in a company. The retreat ended with Martin Zelan, senior scientist at RISE with expertise in metrology and optical clocks, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of working where industry and academia overlap. 

The retreat also included lots of mingling, great food, a group-quiz, and for the brave – a swim in the ocean.