Student Daniel Leber from Australia took part in the 2011 Summer University and sent us this letter describing his experiences with us.
It isn’t easy travelling to Denmark from Australia. The different time zones and the opposite seasons are just some issues, and above all is 20 hours of flying. Despite these challenges, I must say that my experience during the summer chemical engineering program at the Danish Technical University (DTU) made every effort worthwhile.
After travelling Scandinavia for two weeks, my friend and I arrived at the DTU to begin the program. We were immediately paired with other students who were on the program, and who soon after became close friends. Each pair chose four different lab exercises to be completed over the duration of the program.
Much to our amazement, all the labs used state of the art equipment. Furthermore, our lab demonstrators gave us extremely comprehensive face-to-face feedback on our lab reports the day after each submission. This rapidly enhanced the quality of our subsequent reports and our confidence in the topics overall.
Three excursions were also arranged over the program, which provided us with an opportunity to see a little more of Denmark, but more importantly gave us insight into the practicalities of the various industries.
In case you’re wondering, there was a decent amount of free time to explore Copenhagen and to even go to Malmö for lunch (as an Australian, it is unbelievable for me to say that I went to another country for lunch!). However because Copenhagen is such an incredible city with plenty to do in and around, I would recommend arriving at least a week early or leaving later to allow for this.
Not only was the DTU summer program a brilliant opportunity to learn to write high quality lab reports whilst gaining experience with advanced lab equipment, it was also a great opportunity to make new friends from all over the world whilst exploring Copenhagen.
Daniel Leber
Monash University, Australia
The students of the 2011 Summer University