Young Talents

 What is the Young Talents Program?

The Young Talent Program over the years:

At the REA 2019 Symposium, the Young Talents Program (YTP) hosted its 4th edition: A one day workshop for Masters and PhD students in the field of Resilience Engineering (RE). During this workshop, students had the opportunity to present their work and receive mentorship from prominent leaders in the field. The 2019 mentors were Richard Cook, Sidney Dekker, Erik Hollnagel, Gesa Praetorius, David Provan, Mike Rayo, Tarcisio Saurin, Anthony Smoker and David Woods.

Over the years, the YTP has been represented by students from all over the world. The dashboard here presents data on the geographic representation of the participants over the years. It is interesting to note that while the first edition in 2013 had all participants from Europe and Australia, the participation spread quickly to include other continents and regions through later editions. Since 2015, there’s been a steady increase in the number of participants from the United States. The last two editions have seen a healthy representation from South America, particularly, Brazil. The relatively few participants from Asia have come from Japan (2015), Singapore (2017) and Taiwan (2019). The dashboard not only provides a visual of our geographic diversity, but also highlights the potential for greater outreach and representation. For instance, Africa, the Middle East, and large parts of Asia and the Americas are yet to be represented. Could this uneven distribution reflect an untapped potential for the larger REA community to explore opportunities for wider outreach and collaboration? Please feel free to explore the dashboard, navigate through the data, and check for any further detail available. It’s kind of fun! 

The REA Young Talent Committee

• Elleke Ketelaars, Chair, University of Geneva, Switzerland
• Lida David, Co-Chair, University of Twente, The Netherlands
• Sudeep Hegde, Co-Chair – Clemson University, United States
• Riccardo Patriarca, Co-Chair – Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
• Vanessa Becker Bertoni, Member – Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
• Natalia Ransolin, Member – Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

What do previous participants have to say about the YTP?

“The Young Talents consortium of 2013 was my first real connection with the resilience engineering community. The program provided a rare opportunity for me to interact with, and learn from, high-profile researchers in the field of safety engineering and human factors.” (Kenneth Igbo, YT 2013)

“The YT program was just really a great experience. Being able to get feedback on my research not only from some of the leaders in the field, but also to just get the opportunity to interact with some other young researchers was great. You get to share ideas, see different perspectives and even just see that you’re not alone in the process, as others are going through similar things as you.” (Ron Gantt, YT2015)

“The YT programme has been such an inspiring experience in so many ways. Although it was quite challenging to present my work and open up for criticism from such eminent scientists in the RE field, their feedback was invaluable and really helped me focus. Also, I really valued the chance to meet other students from around the world who are grappling with similar questions about RE, and interact with the wider resilience community throughout the Symposium” (Linda de Vries, YT 2017).