The Arqus Talent Scholarship Fund initiative celebrates excellence at its Gathering Event in Granada

The University of Granada (UGR) became the epicentre of academic talent from the Arqus Alliance universities on 17 and 18 March as it hosted the Arqus Talent Scholarship Fund Gathering Event. This meeting brought together excellence scholarship recipients from across the Arqus Alliance for two days, focused on specialised training, scientific exchange and the celebration of multidisciplinary research.

Workshops and Networking

17 March was dedicated exclusively to students. At the historic Buensuceso building and under the title My career toolkits, the scholarship holders participated in an intensive workshop designed to boost their professional future. The training was complemented by practical sessions on preparing elevator pitches and optimising LinkedIn summaries. The day concluded with a cultural immersion through a guided tour of the city of Granada, courtesy of the Erasmus Student Network Granada and a networking dinner at Botánico Café, strengthening personal ties among? young researchers from the different universities in the Alliance.

The Three-Minute Thesis competition

The second day of the event, held at the Centro de Documentación Científica, began with official welcomes by Ana María García Campaña, Vice-Rector for Postgraduate Studies and Lifelong Learning at the UGR, and Dorothy Kelly, Coordinator of the Arqus Alliance. Both highlighted the fundamental role of these scholarships in promoting mobility and excellence within the European Higher Education Area. Meanwhile, Anja Hoffmann and Celia Castillo, the co-leads of the scholarship fund, presented figures showing the impact of a programme that has received almost a thousand applications from over a hundred different countries.

The highlight of the morning was the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition, in which 12 students presented their complex research projects in just three minutes. The variety of topics was important, ranging from cancer immunotherapy and the study of Alzheimer’s variants to the impact of social media on tourism or border security from a feminist perspective.

After the vote, the jury took the exceptional decision to award four prizes instead of the three originally planned, due to the great quality of the presentations. First place went to Biruk Lemlem (Structural reliability assessment of existing Gerber girder schemes in a climate-changing environment), whose presentation stood out for its clarity and power of synthesis. Second place was shared by Grace Rodríguez (Border security is a feminist issue – The spatializing effects of militarization in the border area of Tijuana-San Diego with a focus on violence against women.) and Emily Wapler (One neighbourhood at a time: changing the conditions that sustain crisis), who tied after a close deliberation. The third prize was awarded to Abdur Rasheed (Multi-objective optimisation of agrivoltaic systems), while the “Public Choice Award”, voted by the attendants themselves, went to Neslihan Önder (How community-led rural development programmes create social impacts beyond the aims of dominant economic outcomes of conventional monitoring and evaluation systems).

Following the award ceremony, the day continued with a workshop on Starting a business as a chance after your studies. In this session, students explored the Business Model Canvas and other practical examples of how to transform their research ideas into viable business projects after completing their studies. 

To round off the day, the students, supervisors and Arqus staff enjoyed a lovely dinner at El Carmen de la Victoria, which is situated at the foot of the Alhambra.

This event has not only served to showcase the high scientific level of the Arqus Talent Scholarship Fund recipients but has also reaffirmed the Alliance’s commitment to the complete development of its students, providing them with key tools to lead the future of research and innovation in Europe.

You can check some more nice pictures by visiting our Flickr album!