What are you doing here?

Disclaimer: Like many Scottish people, I have a tendency to ramble, go on tangents, and take a very long time to reach my point. This blog posts that (and this will probably be the case with all of the subsequent ones). Scroll to Section 2 if you want to cut out the nonsense.

First some pictures of the city

Palazzo dei Normani

A random window inside Steri (the university's main administration building)

What are you doing here?

This is a question I've been asked countless times since arriving in Italy and it's one that I'm still not completely comfortable answering.

The question itself is one that can be asked in a number of ways: from people who are just looking for a way to make conversation and who don't really care about the answer; to people struggling to understand why someone would choose to come to southern Italy to pursue a PhD in engineering, it's hardly a typical choice.

Most frequently, however, the person asking the question is another expat (an immigrant under a different name) or international student and it's being asked to determine whether or not you're worth knowing or not. This may sound overly harsh but it makes perfect sense; there's no point in becoming close friends with someone who's going to leave in two months and who you'll most likely never see again after that. That would make for a lonely existence.

Herein lies the reason why I find this question difficult to answer; I'm in Palermo researching the dynamic response of continuous beams of varying configurations under a wide range of loading conditions, and the ultimate goal of my research is the development (if not physically then at least theoretically) of an innovative damper for controlling the vibrations that follow the application of loading.

That's a mouthful.

Of course there's simpler ways of answering; "I'm doing a PhD". That's an answer that I really don't like to give though because I feel like it immediately creates distance between me and the questioner. It's an answer that comes with built in preconceptions and those preconceptions can be harmful in the early stages of a friendship. There's a belief that you're bound to be aloof, overly serious, too straight laced, and (in general) not very fun to be around. I, of course, don't see myself like that in any way, and it's not how I'd like to be perceived.

So who am I and what am I actually doing here?

My name is Iain Dunn and I'm a PhD student at the University of Palermo (or Università degli Studi di Palermo, if you prefer). I'm studying vibrations under the supervision of Prof. Antonina Pirrotta. 

If someone asked me how exactly I ended up here, I'd struggle to answer. Engineering was never a field that I planned on going into, as a child I wanted to be a pilot, partly because of a small misconception that I held (I was under the impression that pilots got to spend the full year going on holiday, they’d fly the plane to where I was going and then wait there until I was coming back, then they’d do it all over again with a new batch of families) and partly because flight always interested me, it seemed like a thoroughly liberating experience, this is also not the case, there’s an awful lot of constraints in the skies. 

Then I started learning how to play the trumpet and, as music was always the subject that i got my best marks in, I considered a career in music. But I’m a pragmatist and this seemed like too romantic of a notion - I wasn’t interested in becoming a music teacher, all I wanted to do was play and it’s incredibly difficult to become a professional musician - so I made a realistic choice, I picked something that I found interesting and that I was good at and I went to university to study mechanical engineering. 

It was around about that time that I became interested in travelling. UK universities constantly stress the benefits of studying abroad, learning a foreign language, gaining international connections… but few people ever take them up on this offer; I however had, perhaps for the first time in my life, found something that I really wanted to do and I was prepared to chase it. 

I had decided, for reasons that I can’t quite remember anymore, that I wanted to go to Germany. I got in touch with the international office and with the professors who were the official liaisons with various German universities and I got nowhere. The problem was that Germany’s semesters were longer than Scotland’s and they started at different times a one semester exchange was impossible while a year long exchange wouldn’t be allowed by the accreditation body.

All of my efforts, however, were not completely in vain as they lead to a week-long “fact finding mission” in Baden-Wüttemberg where I visited 5 universities and 5 companies in 5 days to learn about the opportunities available in southern Germany.

I then shifted to plan B, if I couldn’t do my erasmus placement in Germany, then I’d do it as close to Germany as possible, or (failing that) somewhere sunny.

In the end, I found myself in Porto, Portugal doing a European Project Semester and it was there that I actually developed a passion for what I was studying. Then, while approaching the end of my time in Portugal, I was presented with the opportunity to take a “sandwich year” (a year which doesn’t really count towards your degree but which does provide extra credits and enhanced opportunities for employment, essentially a CV booster) in Germany.

While in Germany I spent six months at Esslingen University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Esslingen) where I studies renewable energy systems along with energy generation and storage; and then I spent 6 months working at  Bosch Engineering GmbH, a company which designs hardware and software for high end automobiles, in the project development department. This should have been my dream job and yet, despite enjoying it greatly, I felt something was missing or rather, I didn’t know enough about what I was doing to appreciate its impact.

After my sandwich year I went back to Scotland, wrote my bachelor’s thesis, and started my master’s degree and (thanks to the gentlest of pushes from my supervisor) I decided that I’d like to start a PhD, and I then immediately decided that if I was doing that, I wasn’t going to stay in Scotland, and that (I suppose) is what I’m doing here.

Section 2 - TL;DR

 My name is Iain Dunn and I’m a first year PhD student at the University of Palermo under the supervision of Prof. Antonina Pirrotta and the Smarti European Training Network.

I am the sixth early stage researcher within this training network and my project concerns the development of a novel formulation of introducing seismic dampers to rail and road bridges, this project has been given the name “Smart Damper” as the end goal is for the seismic damper to be “Smart” how that will be achieved is still to be determined.

I obtained my masters in mechanical and electronic systems engineering from Glasgow Caledonian University in July of 2017 and prior to that I spent a brief amount of time (6 months) working as an intern in the project development department at Bosch Engineering GmbH, a company which designs hardware and software for high end automobiles.

All work and no play ....