The annual first-year PhD conference took place on Tuesday, 20 May 2025, bringing together our newest PhD students from across the IfM to share their research.

The conference offers an opportunity for first-year PhD students to showcase their research to their peers and receive feedback, helping them in refining essential academic skills.

During the day, attendees heard 20 talks that spanned breadth of research at the IfM, covering a wide range of topics all the way from data and intellectual property management to enhancing resilience in food supply chains and even the use of robots for fruit manipulation.

Alongside their presentations, each student prepared a poster explaining their research questions, methodology and aims. These were displayed in the IfM common room throughout the day and sparked insightful discussions between participants and faculty during the breaks.

The organising committee, like the contributors, is also composed entirely of first-year PhD students. This year’s committee, Qi Ang Du, Shan Jin, Samuel Thompson and Tingrui Zhang, worked together to realise a fantastic event.

Tingrui Zhang says, “Being part of the full organising process taught me so much. I now feel ready to take on even bigger international academic conferences with confidence.”

Qi Ang Du adds, "It was a real pleasure to be part of the organising team for this year’s IfM PhD Conference. One of my main roles was coordinating panel members for the PhD presentations, and I’m incredibly grateful to all the colleagues who helped with the invitations – scheduling with such busy calendars wasn’t easy, and I really appreciated everyone’s support.

A big thank you as well to all the panel members who generously gave their time and offered thoughtful, constructive feedback. Their insights were invaluable in helping first-year PhDs strengthen and develop their research ideas".

The organising committee with PhD Divisional Coordinator, Liz George and the Head of the PhD Programme, Frank Tietze.

Award winners

During the event, each student presentation and poster were evaluated by a group of 16 IfM faculty members. They assigned scores to determine the winners and the awards were presented in the closing ceremony.

The Award winners are:

Best Technical Presentation Award – Lea Karbevska, Supply Chain AI Lab

Best Management Presentation Award – Qi Ang Du, Innovation and Intellectual Property Management (IIPM) Laboratory @ CTM

Best Technical Poster Award – Lea Karbevska, Supply Chain AI Lab

Best Management Poster Award – Adam Zhao, Industrial Resilience Research Group

Adam, Lea and Qi receiving their awards

Frank Tietze, Head of the PhD Programme, summarised the day in his closing speech, “Being able to talk about your ideas at a conference is quite a delicate thing and an essential part of an academic’s skillset. The IfM first-year PhD conference is about the experience of sharing ideas and seeing how others react to them, and doing this together as a community and cohort.

We hope this experience has helped the students on their journey, and they have enjoyed communicating their research and learning from their peers.”

To conclude the event and celebrate the completion of a successful conference, the students and faculty enjoyed a formal dinner together in the IfM common room.