In this report, we summarise what the executive board was up to this year in the interest of the association’s progression and for our ADSV community. This year, we focused on keeping a regular schedule of events and reviving the beloved winter retreat.
2024-2025 Executive Board (11 members)
| President | Tom Enbar |
| Vice-President | Vamsi Nallapareddy |
| Treasurer | Nikita Norkin |
| Event Manager | Felix Peters |
| Event Manager | Ekaterina Pyatova (Katya) |
| Event Manager | Yash Garodia |
| Internal affairs coordinator | Catherine Bratschi |
| External affairs coordinator | Yong-Qi Gao (Alex) |
| PhD Coaching Manager | Remo Bättig |
| SV Happy Hour coordinator | Hanrong Hu |
| SV Happy Hour coordinator | Khosiyat Makhmudova |
We’re pleased to welcome board members in green to their first year on the executive board.
Internal organization
The executive board aimed to set up a regular schedule for its most popular events such as the board game night, tea time Tuesdays, Yoga, and a bigger event every few months. This year we also created a PhD Lab Issues roadmap, where students who are considering switching labs can also find guidance on the best steps to take. Events were well done throughout the year, however following the Ski Retreat there was an obvious reduction in events, most likely due to the difficulty of the events team to function optimally with reduced involvement by the entire team.
This year we had our big ski retreat in Torgon with about 100 members from the SV community. It was a great success.
A big thank you to Catherine for organising all of our board meetings, and to Alex for effectively communicating with the student body!
Shared ADSV / AESV room
We maintain SV1510 together with AESV. This room is mainly used by AESV for studying and is mostly occupied by them. It works for us for some permanent storage of games and tea time tuesdays equipment and leftover snacks and drinks from events but is limited to this. Storage of larger material is not possible at this point.
ADSV Office Key
A key lock box has now been glued at the receptionist desk in the SV hall, next to the ADSV office.
Finances
Nikita did a fantastic job as Treasurer this year, tracking all gains to the ADSV fortune and expenses closely. The auditors had only minor comments, because, well, one has to make a comment if one is auditing! He also raised a substantial amount of money this year, as detailed in his financial report, managing to more than replenish the expenses of the year. Additionally, we began communications with Promega, a company that is highly interested in planning events with us and sponsoring us. Further development of this relationship is highly encouraged for the future board.
Members list and alumni
Alex has maintained a mailing list for adsv members ([email protected]).
2025 ADSV ski retreat
The events team supported by the whole ADSV board took on the task of organizing the 2025 ADSV ski retreat. This was a great group effort and was a huge success for the visibility of ADSV. We got great feedback from the community.
Our association has 3 goals:
- Represent the interests of Life Sciences PhD Students
- Integrate PhD Students into a community on which they can depend on for perspective, friendship and inspiration
- Promote scientific and social interaction between PhD students engaged in Life Sciences research
Represent
This goal targets the fact that PhD students are sometimes mistreated, given high expectations or mentally stressed by a PhD. We aim to protect the basic rights of PhD students and seek positive change to promote discussion to shift the environment of the PhD to a happy and exciting time. To fulfil this goal we keep in touch with the student representatives of EDBB, EDCB, EDMS and EDNE to hear how we can help and advocate for our colleagues.
Integrate the PhD Community
PhD Coaching – A big thank you to Remo who operated as Boss Coach of the PhD Coaching program this year. He recruited several new coaches this year and tirelessly (yet politely) bugged the current coaches to pair with new students to mentor. Catherine and Remo also worked hard to prepare a PhD Lab Issues Roadmap, where PhD students who are having issues in their labs and look to for guidance. Thanks again, you did a great job.
ADSV Sweaters & T-shirts – As the shirts from previous years were such a great success, we decided to create a new T-shirt design this year. Keeping it simple, Catherine created a design which combines the themes of the 4 SV programs. We ended up selling 40 items to our members.
Promote scientific and social interaction
Events made up a large portion of our activity this year! We have to send a HUGE HUGE HUGE thank-you to Felix, Yash, and Katya for coordinating (and running!!) most of these events, and a massive thank you to Vamsi for heavily supporting and guiding the team throughout the year.
ADSV Hike (13.07.2024) – Felix and Yash took the ADSV members on a hike to Gruyere. It was an amazing time, everyone really enjoyed it.
Happy Hours (1x/month) – Happy hour is sponsored by the SV faculty, but ADSV has taken the responsibility to organise it. We send massive thanks to Hanrong for coordinating and organising more than her fair share of Happy Hours this year! Khosiyat organized a lot of these at the beginning of the year as well, until she had to leave. Hanrong was also heavily involved in other events and gave her heart into making ADSV events as successful as possible.
Game Nights (every 2nd month) – Felix with the help of the board members organized several board game nights this year with regulars having a great time at throwing burritos at each other or just enjoying each others company with a slice of pizza and a drink.
ADSV Retreat (24.01.2025-26.01.2025) – The events team headed the organisation of the ADSV retreat along with the whole ADSV board. As stated above this was a huge success and great fun for all participants. Thank you to all our helpers.
JumpSpot (14.03.2025) – Vamsi took us to Jumpspot again and showed us how to do a backflip. This is a great event for us to destress and feel like kids again. Well at least until the next day when we feel every muscle in our body.
Mystery dinner (28.11.2024) – Vamsi and the events team spearheaded these special events where participants jumped into a character at two dinner parties.
Tea Time Tuesdays (every other week) – Vamsi and Yash kindly continued the organizational part on this project, while the board members rotated in hosting. The idea of this event is to create an on-going event in which PhD students can rely on happening often, and can drop by to meet new people, and have a well-deserved coffee/tea/cookie.
Halloween party (25.10.2024) – For halloween Vamsi, Felix, Katya, and Yash, with the help of the board, organized a big party at the refuge in Ecublens. We had a great turnout and a fun time with plenty of silly and creative costumes.
Special edition lake happy hour (25.08.2024) – We had our famous summer lake party once again, with Vamsi, Felix, and Yash spearheading it. The turnout was massive and it was an exceptional evening in great company.
A final THANK YOU to everyone on the board. This was a particularly productive year and it was incredibly enjoyable to work with everyone. I am excited to see what the next board comes up with in the next year and wish them all the best of success.