WASP Bus Tour Through Southern Sweden

Close to 30 doctoral students went along on the five-day WASP Bus Tour in mid-September. Company study visits and a couple of social activities in five cities stood on the schedule.

The tour started in Stockholm with a visit at Ericsson. It continued to ABB in Västerås, Epiroc in Örebro, Asta Zero proving ground outside of Göteborg, to finally reach Lund and the European Spallation Source (ESS) facility. To coordinate the trip, Professor Amy Loutfi and Professor Karl-Erik Årzén travelled along all week.

Visit at the Asta Zero proving ground.

Yushan Zhang, PhD student at Linköping University, didn’t have any previous experience with Swedish industry. She mentions that the tour gave new insights about what they are doing. Her impression was that they seem quite practical and innovative. Especially, the visit at Epiroc was extra memorable:

– We had an opportunity to visit their assembly line and their products. There were also VR facilities and simulators for us to try some basic operations. This was helpful for understanding what they are doing.

Prabhat Kumar Jha, PhD student at Chalmers, agrees that the visit at Epiroc in Örebro stood out, but also the ABB visit in Västerås:

– During the week I got an understanding of the kind of problems Swedish industry is interested in. We could see the connections and differences between academic versus industrial research problems. The tours at Epiroc and ABB were quite related to my PhD project so the presentations about their research were very enriching.

One might expect that sharing a bus and engaging in full-day schedules with 30 other people for five days is quite intense. Nonetheless, it was also a kick start for the participants to get to know each other.

– It was a very diverse group, and we had many opportunities to discuss about our projects, experiences, and future plans, Prabhat says. He continues:

– Amy Loutfi and Karl-Erik Årzén were amazing hosts and we had discussions about our works in a very informal setup. Discussing with students with different expertise benefits in increasing our understanding about what is happening in various research areas, it also exposes us to problems that we do not find in our own areas.

Yushan Zhang have a similar view:

– It went really well with the other PhD students. We had a whole week on the same bus. It’s a good opportunity to get to know each other and even possibly to have potential collaboration. Amy and Karl-Erik were also really nice and helpful.