Testimonial
Jonas Schmidinger, recipient Student Conference Grant
Jonas Schmidinger got the chance to present his work in the field of digital soil mapping on the conference of the European Geophysical Union.
University Fund Wageningen allowed me as a Master’s student to make my output visible to more experienced scientists. I am sure that this will be an advantage for my upcoming scientific career.
"It was the first time that I had to give presentations on a ‘bigger’ stage to other researchers and experts of my field. Therefore, I felt a bit more pressure and tension in the days before the upcoming conference, especially also because the EGU can be quite overwhelming as it hosts almost 20,000 visitors."
"Ultimately, the presentations went well but more importantly they received recognition by the audience which I infer from the subsequent discussions with other scientists who showed interest in my work. Hence, I even exchanged emails with multiple people who indicated that they may want to collaborate with me in the future or were interested in the methodological approaches of my papers. This was a very new experience for me because despite being ‘just’ a freshly graduated Master’sstudent, I was not treated as such by the other researchers but rather like a fellow colleague. Thisgave me confidence in my scientific abilities and potential but also showed me that I moved past the stage of being a university student, which makes me look more forward to my soon starting PhD position."
"Apart from my own presentations, there were multiple presentations or poster sessions that I attended and which gave me new creative input. Further, in my free time I met my supervisor and other colleagues, which made it possible to also bond with researchers outside of the academic and scientific context."
"Attending the EGU conference made an impact on me and will certainly influence my future scientific career positively because; (i) I was able to connect with other scientists and exchanged contacts that may prove useful for future collaborations, (ii) I made my work visible as some researchers already indicated that they would like to continue working on concepts introduced by me and my supervisor, (iii) I got more confident in my own capabilities and (iv) I got some useful feedback and had some inspiring discussions about topics that I am interested in. I appreciate that the University Fund Wageningen made this possible to me!"