On 26.02.2021, I succesfully completed the scientific defence of my doctoral thesis titled “Thermal cutting of steel plates – modelling, simulation and optimal control of preheating strategies”. The defence at the Technical University of Berlin consists on a 30min presentation of the work done and then a 1 to 2 hours discussion with the reviewers of the thesis. The reviewers were Prof. Dolores Gómez Pedreira from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Prof. Alfred Schmidt from the University of Bremen and Prof. Dietmar Hömberg from the Technical University of Berlin. Professor Hömberg was also the academic supervisor of the MIMESIS Work Package 7, which is the work package associated with this thesis.
Due to the current pandemic situation, the university regulations only allowed for an online defence. So, there couldn’t be any big celebration afterwards. On the bright side, this method made it easier for international colleagues to attend the event, specially for those I met during MIMESIS residing in Finland and Norway, and for those living in my home country, Spain.
Later on Friday 26th, I was honored to receive box with gifts from the colleagues of the Research Group 4 at the Weierstrass Institute (WIAS). This was my employer and academic institution during MIMESIS.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude for the support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 675715 (MIMESIS) and all 5 partners who made MIMESIS a reality: EFD Induction in Norway; SSAB, Outokumpu, and the University of Oulu in Finland; and Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics (WIAS) in Germany.