With NERDS hitting 7 years old and growing over 30 people, it has been long overdue to hold our first retreat. We did so last week at the AI Pioneer Center, in the old astronomic observatory inside Copenhagen’s beautiful botanic garden (plus awesome dinner at Food Club Nørrebro), organized by Jonas, Jan, and Toine.

The retreat was a wonderful event that deepened our social ties, where we learned much more about each other, and discussed what works well or what does not work so well at NERDS.

On all levels, from faculties to long-term NERDS and visitors, we identified issues we want to improve, including diversity and hiring, more internal exchange, website updates, or more formalized tasks with ownership (and PhD duty credits). It was great to see though that we do not have any serious social issues – to the contrary, the retreat was a confirmation of how well we all get along, and how nice a research group can be. ❤️

In the coming weeks we are going to get to work to implement the short-term-implementable issues, keep pushing for improving our long-term issues to make NERDS an even better place, and definitely aim to make the NERDS retreat a recurring experience!