Between 19-22th June Mihaela Taranu participated in a summer school in Switzerland organised by Prof. Dr. Claudia Roebers and Dr. Mariette van Loon from University of Bern.
This year's summer school at the Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory (CCLM) focused on Cognitive Control and Consciousness: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms. Please read Mihaela's summary below:
My participation at this summer school was possible because of the generous scholarship from University of Bern and the Jacobs Foundation Zurich. Thank you for offering me this great opportunity.
This was the last summer school I attended as a PhD student and was an amazing experience. Such a great venue, so well organized and such a good scientific program!
The summer school offered me the opportunity to extend my knowledge about consciousness and cognitive control. At the same time, it helped me thinking about my own work on multistable perception in a larger context.
Specifically, I have learned about motivation and cognitive control from Prof. Dr. Todd Braver, memory and déjà vu from Prof. Dr. Christopher Moulin, about depletion, individual differences and emotions from Prof. Dr. Brandon Schmeichel and about adolescent development from Dr. Adriana Galván. I highly recommend reading their work, it is very well written and inspiring. Beside presenting their research, each of the keynote speakers made an amazing job to be around the students during the entire week. They answered openly to all our questions regarding academic life, student- supervisor relationship, life-work balance, or gender equality.
The summer school would not have been so successful without the amazing PhD students. We all presented our work either in the form of a presentation, paper or poster. Was extremely beneficial to talk with each of them about research and other important topics relevant for each of us: research designs, data analysis, career pathways, relationship with supervisors, living in different countries, or work-life balance.
Thank you everyone for attending and making the summer school a memorable experience!