"hello, world"

It is a phrase, commonly used as first programming attempt, inherited from a 1974 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial.
This is the “hello, world” of the GraWIToN newsletter, aiming to describe the next three years of scientific activities, experiences and life of the young researchers (or Early stage Researchers, ESRs, in the European Commission jargon) collaborating to the GraWIToN project. In this number “0” of the GraWIToN newsletter, the ESRs are commenting their first impact with the GraWIToN world, their expectations for the future.
GraWIToN is an Initial Training Network, funded by the European Commission under FP7-Marie Curie Actions. It involves the institutes and the universities leading the Gravitational Wave research in Europe and it aims to the training of young researcher in this field with a special focus on optics issues.

GraWIToN Full and Associated Partners:

Partner NameCountryPrivate
European Gravitational Observatory Italy/France No
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare Italy No
Laser Zentrum Hannover Germany No
Max Planck Gesellschaft Germany No
Gooch & Housego (UK) Ltd UK Yes
The University of Birmingham UK No
The University of Glasgow UK No
Boostec SAS France Yes
Università di Pisa Italy No
Leibniz Universität Hannover Germany No
TRII s.r.l. Italy Yes
neoLASE Germany Yes
Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tarbes France No

Target of the project is to train researchers capable to play a relevant role both in the academic and in the industrial research. Why GraWIToN, born in a fundamental research field, has this special attention to the multidisciplinary skills, with a special care for industrial applications? First, the complex optical apparatuses, high power and low noise lasers, high reflective coatings, optical simulations and modelling using parallel computing systems are crucial technologies used in gravitational wave detectors and obviously are extremely interesting for the industrial sector, as highlighted by the participation of four private companies to the GraWIToN consortium. Then, occupational perspectives for PhD awarded researchers are evolving and require new approaches. In fact, the number of the PhD awarded (in the OECD countries, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is grown in the past, as shown in Fig.1 and in the past the main occupation was in the academia, as shown in Fig.2. But the trend in Fig.3 shows that it is crucial to give to the PhD a multidisciplinary training , also oriented to the technological skills, because academia cannot anymore offer a occupational future to all the doctorate researchers.
GraWITON is then the first attempt in Europe to conjugate the fundamental research in gravitational wave with the technological spin-off in the industrial side. All us, students, teachers and collaborators will be engaged, in the next three years, in this adventure.

written by Michele Punturo
GraWIToN Project coordinator

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