Agnieszka Roczek’s life is full of activity – she has student jobs and is coming to the end of two courses at the same time. Her ambitions are high and her studies at DTU Informatics have given her access to attractive student jobs at Risø DTU and Maersk.
Involved lecturers give a good study environment
Agnieszka Roczek has studied for a little more than a year at DTU. She is in the process of finishing her mechanical engineering course in Poland and is at the same time writing her MMC Master thesis at DTU Informatics. So every other month she travels to Poland.
“I am writing my thesis on the background of a concrete project for Maersk, where I also have a student job,” she says. “However, that job is on stand-by right now because I don’t have the time. The idea for the project arose in the department where I also had a student job – that was by chance, but it’s an advantage as I and the staff know each other and don’t have to start over again.”
The project is about optimising the retrieval of oil from rock pores.
“In simple terms,” Agnieszka says, “water is pumped through one pipeline, flows through the rocks and the mixture of water and oil is led out through a neighbouring pipeline.
My focus will be on simulating the water flow through the pores in order to maximise the volume of retrieved oil. It will be about solving a very large system of differential equations describing the flow and constructing and solving the optimisation problem.”
As well as writing two theses, Agnieszka also has a student job at Risø, where she is involved in a project analysing turbine blades for wind turbines.
“The turbine blades must work optimally, so, with the aid of models, I test how robust the blades are, which type of blade works best, and so on.”
Agnieszka’s studies at DTU are partly funded by a scholarship. She says this means that she does not have to work as much alongside her studies as so many other foreign students. Her boyfriend, who is also from Poland, is also studying at DTU; but he does not have a scholarship and must therefore work considerably more than her. Finance is a problem for foreign students, Agnieszka says, noting that as a foreign student in Denmark she cannot get a student discount on public transport. But that certainly does not stop her from studying in Denmark and at DTU.
Flexible studies
“DTU was a deliberate choice,” she says. “I checked out the universities in several countries when I decided that I would study abroad, and I definitely believe that the course at DTU Informatics was the most interesting one. I visited DTU and got a really good impression of the place. The method of studying is much more flexible than in Poland and at DTU Informatics we have a large degree of freedom in choosing the courses that interest us. I consider the flexibility of the course and the option of combining the various courses to be a great advantage.”
Business-related teaching
“The lecturers at DTU Informatics are very good in terms of communicating with the students,” Agnieszka says. “I experience a great deal of openness, a willingness to discuss and a feeling of equality between students and lecturers. The lecturers’ involvement both when they are teaching and at other times rubs off on the students. At the same time, they are unbelievably good at telling the students why the teaching is relevant and how we can use the knowledge later, both during our studies and in business.”
For the time being, Agnieszka has not yet decided what she will do once she has finished her MMC Master. She will probably return to Poland and her family, but she is also open to the possibility of finding an interesting job abroad. But at the moment it isn’t a job abroad that attracts her – what motivates her is her family and a desire to start a family herself.