As is tradition, the BGCE family welcomes the newest cohort of the Bavarian Graduate School of Computational Engineering (BGCE) program in its yearly spring gathering. This year, we see a large intake of 19 new juniors that started in the Winter Semester 2023/24!
After an informal introduction to the roots of the Elite Graduate Program “Bavarian Graduate School of Computational Engineering” (BGCE) by our very own Tobias Neckel, the new BGCE batch attended the Soft Skill Seminar “When teamwork works”, lead by the two coordinators Jan Seydel and Michael Wiedenmann.
Later that evening, we enjoyed an in-depth exploration of the future prospects of algorithmic improvement of Machine Learning al-gorithms in a talk by Prof. Hans-Joachim Bungartz in the traditional “Kaminabend”.
On Saturday, the BGCE students took part in the Soft Skills courses "When Team-work Works" and "Step Out", designed to foster some Esprit de corps and teach teamwork skills. While the juniors focused on fundamental teamwork, the seniors were tasked with execution during an excursion.
The final day of the Opening Weekend took place on Sunday, 13th April. There, the juniors and seniors worked through the “Group Challenge” activity together, where they were presented with a complicated task to accomplish together in a minimal stint of time. This culminated in the final “Consulting Circle”, where the seniors could share their gathered wisdom to the juniors in a guided, informal session.
As an improvement from last year, we were pleasantly surprised by the large number of excellent candidates and we fully enjoyed the interaction of the Opening Weekend with the new intake. We are very much looking forward to working with them for another eventful BGCE year.
