From January 15th to 18th I was attending the 17th International 17th Symposium “Topical problems in Electrical and Power Engineering” and the “Doctoral School of Energy and Geotechnology” in the beautiful seaside city of Kuressaare, Estonia. The organizers were so kind as to invite me to talk about IEEE, about the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (of which I’m Vice President for Workshops in 2018) and about my own research.

I really enjoyed participating there, with a lot of eminent researchers in different fields, but especially with the many students which attended, for a total of about 120. It was great to see how all these people that didn’t know each before were getting together day after day and at the end had a great time. Technical presentations, tutorials on paper writing, doctoral thesis training and other scientific activities filled the mornings and afternoons, while social events were held every night to ensure that everybody enjoyed their stay there.

My opinion is that type of events is very useful for students and young professionals. The organizers are active IEEE volunteers and they would like to have IEEE involved in some way. We will be working on finding the right fitting inside the IEEE structure. Any suggestion is welcome.