In this report, we summarise what the executive board was up to this year in the interest of the association’s progression and for our ADSV community. This year, we focused on keeping a regular schedule of events and reviving the beloved winter retreat.
2023-2024 Executive Board (11 members)
| President | Stella Krämer |
| Vice-President | Tom Enbar |
| Treasurer | Linda Wedemann |
| Event Manager | Vamsi Nallapareddy |
| Event Manager | Jose Antonio Vasquez Porto Viso |
| Event Manager | Olga Pushkareva |
| Internal Affairs Coordinator | Catherine Bratschi |
| PhD Coaching Manager | Liyan Smeding |
| Communiations Manager | Ilia Igashov |
| SV Happy Hour Coordinator | Maria Boulougouri |
| Fundraising Manager | Asya Dolgikh |
We’re pleased to welcome board members in green to their first year on the executive board.
Internal Organisation
The executive board aimed to set up a regular schedule for its most popular events such as the board game night, tea time tuesdays and a bigger event every few months. We also decided to connect with the student representatives from the four SV programs more and offer our help in solving issues PhD’s face. This worked to some extent but scheduling these meetings proved trickier than expected.
This year we had our big ski retreat in Leukerbad with 100 members from the SV community. It was a great success. A big thank you to Catherine for organising all of our board meetings!
Shared ADSV / AESV room
We maintain SV1510 together with AESV. This room is mainly used by AESV for studying and is mostly occupied by them. It works for us for some permanent storage of games and tea time tuesdays equipment and leftover snacks and drinks from events but is limited to this. Storage of larger material is not possible at this point. Catherine took charge of taking inventory of the stocks in this room, so now we finally have an overview of everything we own.
Finances
Linda did a fantastic job as Treasurer this year, tracking all gains to the ADSV fortune and expenses closely. The auditors had only minor comments, because, well, one has to make a comment if one is auditing!
Asya wrote a detailed proposal to obtain funding from the faculty last year, and obtained a promise of 5000 CHF for the association from the SV faculty. For our ski retreat we received 5000 CHF from the BMI, 2500 from ISREC and 2500 CHF from the GHI. The money fundraised from the institutes was spent on the ski retreat in January 2024.
Stella and Asya met with Harald Hirling to discuss his expectations from the association for our proposals for funding, and how much money we can reasonably obtain. We agreed to 5000 CHF. We agreed that satellite campus should also benefit from this funding.
Members list and alumni
Stella has maintained a mailing list for adsv members ([email protected]).
Mailing and handling contacts
Thank you Ilia for being on top of the adsv email address and forwarding all important messages. Thank you as well for sending out any email requests we had for you.
2023 ADSV ski retreat
José supported by the whole ADSV board took on the task of organizing the 2023 ADSV ski retreat with the help from everyone on the board. This was a great group effort and was a huge success for the visibility of ADSV. We recorded far more participants at other events following the retreat and got great feedback from the community.
Our association has 3 goals:
- Represent the interests of Life Sciences PhD Students
- Integrate PhD Students into a community on which they can depend on for perspective, friendship and inspiration
- Promote scientific and social interaction between PhD students engaged in Life Sciences research
Represent
This goal targets the fact that PhD students are sometimes mistreated, given high expectations or mentally stressed by a PhD. We aim to protect the basic rights of PhD students and seek positive change to promote discussion to shift the environment of the PhD to a happy and exciting time. To fulfil this goal we keep in touch with the student representatives of EDBB, EDCB, EDMS and EDNE to hear how we can help and advocate for our colleagues.
Integrate the PhD Community
PhD Coaching – A big thank you to Liyan who operated as Boss Coach of the PhD Coaching program this year. He recruited several new coaches this year and tirelessly (yet politely) bugged the current coaches to pair with new students to mentor. Thanks again, Liyan! You did a great job.
ADSV Sweaters & T-shirts – As the sweaters from Liyan were such a great success in the past year we decided to create a new T-shirt design this year. Keeping it simple, Liyan created a design fusing “ADSV” written in amino acid structure with our newly voted mascot Spartacus the seagull.Liyan ordered the printed T-shirts. We ended up selling 37 items to our members.
Promote scientific and social interaction
Events made up a large portion of our activity this year! We have to send a HUGE HUGE HUGE thank-you to José, Olga and Vamsi for coordinating (and running!!) most of these events.
ADSV Hike (11.06.2023) – José, Olga, Vamsi and Tom took the ADSV members on a hike to the Grand Muveran. It was an amazing time, everyone really enjoyed it.
Happy Hours (1x/month) – Happy hour is sponsored by the SV faculty, but ADSV has taken the responsibility to organise it. We send massive thanks to Maria for coordinating and organising more than her fair share of Happy Hours this year! Maria was also heavily involved in understanding Mediacom’s new event rules and gave her heart into keeping happy hours on Fridays.
Game Nights (every 2nd month) – Tom with the help of the board members organized several board game nights this year with regulars having a great time at throwing burritos at each other or just enjoying each others company with a slice of pizza and a drink.
ADSV Retreat (January 2024) – José headed the organisation of the ADSV retreat along with the whole ADSV board. As stated above this was a huge success and great fun for all participants. Thank you to all our helpers.
JumpSpot (15.03.2024) – Liyan took us to Jumpspot again and showed us how to do a backflip. This is a great event for us to destress and feel like kids again. Well at least until the next day when we feel every muscle in our body.
Mystery dinner (28.11.2023, 23.04.24) – Vamsi and Stella spearheaded these special events where participants jumped into a character at two dinner parteis.
Tea Time Tuesdays (every other week) – Stella kindly continued the organizational part on this project, while the board members rotated in hosting. The idea of this event is to create an on-going event in which PhD students can rely on happening often, and can drop by to meet new people, and have a well-deserved coffee/tea/cookie. Our valentines day special edition was also a fun little extra event.
Tie dye event (27.07.24) – Maria and Vamsi hosted this creative event, where PhD students could dye or bleach old clothes to support the no-waste movement.
Easter scavenger hunt (12.04.2024) – A huge thank you to Tom, Vamsi, and Olga for organizing such a fun scavenger hunt for easter. Despite the rain, the teams went around the west side of campus to find clues as to where the easter bunny was kidnapped to.
Halloween party (03.11.24) – For halloween Vamsi, Tom, Olga, and Jose, with the help of the board, organized a big party at the refuge in Ecublens. We had a great turnout and a fun time with plenty of silly and creative costumes.
Special edition lake happy hour (25.08.23) – As the happy hour takes a summer break Tom had the brilliant idea of bringing a couple of happy hour supplies down to the lake at Parc Bourget. The turnout was massive and it was an exceptional evening in great company.
Movie night (15.05.24) – Due to an abundance of snacks left over by other events, Olga and Stella organized a movie night to raid our stock room. We watched the movies Gattaca and Another round.
A final THANK YOU to everyone on the board. This was a particularly productive year and it was incredibly enjoyable to work with everyone. I am excited to see what the next board comes up with in the next year and wish them all the best of success.