Ardhianiswari Diah Ekawati: Modelling Week
MODELLING WEEK
Ardhianiswari Diah Ekawati
Accreditation and Academic Quality Assurance Specialist, BINUS UNIVERSITY
It was summer 2004, I just finished my master’s degree in Otto-von-Guericke Universitaet Magdeburg Germany and was ready to return to Indonesia. I had the ticket for my return flight in 4 weeks, and even already shipped some of my stuff home. I don’t remember exactly how, but a friend told me about an event called Modeling week organized by Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e), The Netherlands. It is a one-week workshop where master’s graduated students from all over the world come together to solve some real industries problems with the supervision of TU/e lecturers. The event sounded interesting to me since I like systems modeling, not to mention because they took care of the transportation tickets with the accommodation and meals – so basically everything’s free. I have not been in Eindhoven before and I thought – why not, so I just applied it and in less than a week after that I got their email that I was invited to that modeling week event. I barely remember the details, but everyone’s so friendly and nice and it was a fun – though not easy at all – event. We stayed in De Kempervenen, a bungalow park not too far from TU/e campus and worked to solve industrial problems presented by the problem owners from Dow Chemical BV. We made into group of 5-6 people led by a current trainee of Mathematics of Industry – TU/e. About half of the group is the current trainees and the other is non trainees which came to Eindhoven for this event. It was quite stressful during the day as we did not have a lot of time until the end of the week when we should present our solutions in front of some Dow Chemical BV’s employees. But when we returned to the bungalow, it was fun time, we prepared our dinner and breakfast together every day. It was actually my first European experience since most of the trainees and non-trainees were from The Netherlands and other European countries such as Russia and Ukraine.
After one of the Modeling Weeks in 2005 with Oce Technologies BV
Group presentation by the end of the Modeling Week
Barbecue time at the bungalow
The event turned out to be a recruitment event for Technological designer traineeship in Mathematic of Industry of TU/e, something that I only knew after joined it. It ‘s a two-year post master’s program where the trainees get involved in a great variety of projects with industries such as Philips, DSM, ASML, Dow Benelux BV, Thales Nederland, Océ Technologies BV, etc . The same as PhD candidates in TU/e, the trainees are employed by the university so we get salary and other benefits provided for university employees. By the end of the modeling week I decided to apply for the trainee position and stayed for the interview session on Monday. To make the story short, they offered me the trainee position, 3 or 4 days before my return flight to Indonesia. There’s another new trainee from Indonesia in my batch and the two of us actually the first Indonesians in the MI program. After 4 months waiting for my Dutch visa in Indonesia, I returned to Europe. After that, it was a great 2 year and 3 months where I met a lot of nice people and got a lot of friends and experiences. I spent my last year in Terneuzen where Dow Benelux BV located. I did my final project there for a bit over a year, working on the Design of Management Tool to Assess and Analyze Competencies and Skills. This final project led me to a job offer in StepStone Solutions (now Lumesse), a talent management solutions provider in Dusseldorf, Germany – where I worked for almost 6 years before I decided to return to Indonesia last February. It was a delayed return indeed; I intended only to study for 14 months in Germany and ended up living in the Netherlands and Germany for almost 10 years.
An Indonesian dinner after my final presentation in Dow Benelux BV
To know more about Technological designer programs of TU/e, please click this link or contact me at aekawati@binus.edu.
Related Content: