written by José Maria Maza-Ortega
Disclaimer: I am neither Milovan Majstorović nor Rudyard Kipling, so don’t expect this blog post to be entertaining or life-changing. If you are part of the Instagram generation, you can stop reading right now and just look at the photos. But, please, give me a like so that Jelisaveta stops chasing me. The time has come to look back and take stock of the last three years in which the School of Electrical Engineering (University of Belgrade) or ETF for friends, TU Delft, the University of the Basque Country and the University of Seville have worked side by side on the SUNRISE project. We had the opportunity to do so at our last consortium meeting held in Seville at the end of November. The fact is that, beyond the technical interest of the meeting, Seville must have something special to attract the teams from the different universities that make up the consortium. Maybe the sunny weather and 20 degrees (Celsius not Farenheit) by the end of November, the rabo de toro and the fact that Sevilla was the capital of the world just 3 centuries ago are some of the reasons. It was a real pleasure to welcome and host you all!
Over a couple of days, we had the opportunity to analyse all the milestones we have achieved together, which is no small feat, and of which we are tremendously proud: setting up a state-of-the-art laboratory at the ETF in Belgrade, training its technical staff to operate it properly, tutorials on HIL technology, workshops with different industrial stakeholders, summer schools for early-career researchers, special sessions at conferences, training administrative staff in research management, write research papers, do presentations at international conferences, and surely some others that I cannot recall at the moment.
In my view, these types of projects are essential. It is not about a one-way transfer of knowledge from the most experienced universities, but rather about sitting down to listen and share experiences in order to improve. At the end of the day, we are all university lecturers, nothing more. Never forget that.
And so it has been, because not only ETF has benefited from the SUNRISE project: I am also aware of the leap forward that our so-called laboratory group at the University of Seville has made thanks to the project. The key is to have a team of people who constantly want to step outside their comfort zone to embark on new projects. I am proud of them. So a big thank to Manolo, Juan, Álvaro, Paco, Andrei and Fran. Now we know: (i) how to make tutorials; (ii) distinguish between different types of rakija; (iii) read from a teleprompter; (iv) participate in workshops in Serbian; (v) organise summer schools; (vi) get into a car through its windows; (vii) give special sessions at conferences; (viii) read words written in Cyrillic; (ix) understand Serbian (the key is just to understand what Зона means); (x) miss a bus on the outskirts of Belgrade and walk back to the city centre; (xi) sign collaboration agreements with international companies; (xii) pronounce Krstivojevic without hesitation; (xiii) and even export prototypes that, surprisingly, work outside our laboratory… Who would have thought about it just three years ago!
So, all I can say is thank you to ETF for counting on us as a partner in the SUNRISE project. It has been a real pleasure working with each and every one of you: Предраг, Лепосава (which obviously lives up to its name), Јелена, Милета, Горан, Милован, Јелисавета, Томислав, Кристина and Лука. And thanks also to our colleagues at TU Delft, Aleksandra and Aditya, and the University of the Basque Country: Pablo (rotating counterclockwise around the planet), Marene, Oihane, Unai and Araitz.
And now it’s time to look to the future together with new projects, new challenges and opportunities so that I can improve my blogging skills and catch up with my admired and inimitable Professor Majstorović. It would be a DREAM to share with you all another SUNRISE!