Last month our PhD students signed their joint degree contacts, one step in the process of bringing together University of Technology, Sydney and Eindhoven University of Technology. Both universities have now signed a Key Technology Partnership, which means there are increased opportunities for academic exchange and collaboration between the two distant places. Our project is one of the ways such collaboration can take place and in all modesty we hope to be a poster child for others interested in developing relations. Today UTS Newsroom gave us front page attention with the photo (by Clare Donald) shown on top, although the actual signing of the contracts took place last month. The article further discusses the reasons for both universities to agree on this partnership, both citing a shared research focus and mutual benefits.

In practice, having these contracts in place means that nearly all pieces of the puzzle are in place to complete the PhD projects with a shared degree from both universities. Of course, what we haven’t yet discussed on these pages is the actual work to feature in those projects, but a new year brings new promises and hopefully interesting blog posts.