The 5th of April the ‘Séminaire des Doctorants 2ème année (‘2nd year PhD students seminar’) was held in Nantes (France). The seminar is compulsory for all the second year PHD students of the universities associated to the ‘Ecole Doctorale SPIGA’ , an organism whose main objective is to offer administrative support to PHD students and organize for them academic and professional trainings. The goal of the seminar is to present the PHD work you have done so far in front of a jury of professors coming from different universities who are not in contact with your PHD supervisors. The jury must then evaluate 
your work and report if there are problems that could compromise the continuation of the PhD.
Me, Rubén and Ramiro attended this event being our first academic institution, the Ecole Centrale de Nantes, associated to the ‘Ecole Doctorale SPIGA’. I think that this mid-term seminar has been a good opportunity to make an ordered and consistent summary of all the work done so far that will be very useful for the future thesis defense too. Moreover, having the opportunity to discuss your work with professors who are not in your supervision team and who are not necessarily specialists in your same topic, it is always a good exercise for presenting your work in the clearest way avoiding taking for granted methods or concept that maybe in other contexts you would not explain. I have also found the suggestions and the comments the jury made at the end of my presentation very useful for my personal and professional development. Furthermore I have had the chance to listen many interesting talks of other PHD students about lots of different topics as meshes generations and adaptations from satellite images, Cable-Driven Parallel Robots and Manifold learning-based patient specific surgical simulators and to see different way to work and to approach research from the students but also from the different supervisors and the different laboratories or companies.
One curiosity: I was supposed to do my presentation in English, but once in front of the jury they proposed me to try to do it in French without caring about little mistakes I could do. I had already done reunions in French but this has been my first official presentation in French in front of a jury and at the end both the jury and I have been very satisfied with my effort. This is another big opportunity that Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN-ETN AdMoRe project gives you, the possibility of living and working in another country learning new languages and discovering new cultures.