MAP Alumni Round Table 2021

Due to the re­strictions im­posed by the Coro­na pan­dem­ic, this event also had to take place online - unfor­tunately with­out the ex­treme­ly deli­cious inter­na­tional dishes that stu­dents of the Elite Graduate Program "Advanced Materials and Processes" usual­ly pre­pare and bring them­selves. How­ever, the MAP Alumni Round Ta­ble 2021 gained fo­cus in the online for­mat, as more MAP alum­ni work­ing abroad could be invit­ed this time. In total, three MAP alum­ni who al­ready had eight to ten years of pro­fes­sional expe­rience pre­sent­ed them­selves for dis­cussion.

Katja Wadlinger, MAP stu­dent since au­tumn 2020, re­ports:

Three for­mer MAP stu­dents made time to talk to us about their career paths.

As some­one inter­ested in entre­pre­neurship, Alex­andra Grigore, a native of Ro­ma­nia, was the first guest and most inspir­ing for me. After com­plet­ing her PhD, she co-founded Sim­prints, a UK-based com­pany where she is cur­rently Chief Prod­uct Of­ficer and Head of Inno­va­tion. She gave a unique in­sight into this career choice.

The sec­ond guest, Mani Diba, origi­nally from Iran, is cur­rently a Ma­rie Curie Post­doc­toral Fel­low at Har­vard Uni­versi­ty. Previ­ously, his path took him through vari­ous coun­tries such as the UK, the Neth­er­lands and Tex­as/USA, where he stud­ied and worked. We fol­lowed with great inter­est the in­sights he gave us into inter­na­tional life in aca­dem­ia.

The third In­do-German alum­nus Anirudh Acharya has be­come a global prod­uct man­ager at BASF, hav­ing also stud­ied and worked in sever­al coun­tries. He intro­duced us to im­portant ba­sics for the transi­tion from aca­demia to work­ing in a com­pa­ny.

All MAP alum­ni spoke en­thusi­as­tically about their time study­ing at MAP, their great per­sonal and aca­demic mem­ories, and how much they learned in the "di­verse", "col­our­ful" and "fas­cinat­ing" MAP envi­ron­ment with stu­dents from many dif­ferent aca­demic and cul­tural back­grounds. Alex­andra Grigore de­scribed this par­ticular time as the "time of my life".

It made us a little sad as "lockdown stu­dents” to hear about all the great activi­ties that for­mer MAP stu­dents did to­geth­er. For us, these activi­ties could only be of­fered online or did not hap­pen at all, but it also made us look for­ward to all the great expe­rienc­es that our sec­ond year of study will bring.

We also had the op­por­tunity to ask the MAP alum­ni our per­sonal ques­tions. For ex­am­ple, con­versa­tions arose about what quali­ties of new em­ploy­ees are im­portant to em­ploy­ers, or what quali­ties a per­son needs to found their own com­pa­ny.

We no­ticed in all MAP alum­ni their pas­sion for what they do. We have been moved and en­couraged by the career paths of these for­mer MAP stu­dents. They have shown us what is possi­ble and in­spired us to dream big."

The entire MAP team was thrilled to hear that MAP alum­ni are plan­ning a reun­ion in Er­langen in 2022. We are all very much look­ing for­ward to this reun­ion and hope that our cur­rent stu­dents will also have the op­por­tunity to meet our alum­ni then.

Text: Elite Graduate Program "Advanced Materials and Processes":Katja Wadlinger (MAP starting class of 2020) and Dorothea Herget (programme coordinator)