The 1st GraWIToN school has been held at EGO from the 20th of April to the 8th of May. If we describe the school by “numbers”, the depicted scenario is quite impressive: beside the 12 GraWIToN ESRs, other 13 students participated to the school. 24 teachers, coming from all Europe, have contributed with about 100 hours of lessons distributed in the three weeks of the school. The spectrum of the subjects presented during the school has been really wide: the basic notions of the gravitational wave (GW) research, elements of general relativity and astrophysics, basic concepts of optics and laser technology, a first approach to the simulation environments in GW research, notions of digital signal processing and science communications tools. Team building has been a self-organised activity, having the students completely shared their spare time during the school (and the idea to have hosted them in the same hotel in Pisa has been quite positive). Between the most “sparkling” sessions it is possible to cite the science communication lessons and the activities with the Arduino micro-controller during the digital signal processing session, where the students had to play with hardware, software and algorithms.

Now the comments of the GraWIToN students are collected to evaluate the quality of the school and to improve the next school, that will be organised in November 2015, hosted by the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI, L’Aquila), and focused on astrophysics and data analysis aspects.
In parallel to the school other events have been organised: the LIGO-Virgo electromagnetic follow-up meeting, with the participation of tens of Astrophysicists and astronomer coming mainly (but not exclusively) from the whole Europe and the Virgo Week, the periodic meeting of the Virgo collaboration. This overlap exposed the students to a really international environment and demonstrated a quite good capability of the EGO infrastructures and services to support international events.
A special thank should be given to the persons that made all that possible: Erika Morucci, who anticipated or solved all the administration, organisation and logistic problems; Elena Cuoco, who has been main builder of the scientific content and structure of the school; the whole EGO computing department, and in particular Andrea Matteini and Giuseppe di Biase, that supported the school and its needs during these three long weeks.

Dr. Michele Punturo