Paraphrasing the song’s lyric: There is a time when we hear a certain call and the World has to keep a social distance. There were people trying to organise for the first time in Europe an International Conference on Postgraduate Research in the field of Maritime Technology.

The Polish Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers KORAB is a learning society and continues the heritage of the organisation set in 1924 by the Polish Students of Naval Architects studying at the Gdańsk University of Technology, in those days Gdańsk was so called “free city”. Now Polish SNAME “KORAB” is a member of CEMT (The Confederation of European Maritime Technology societies) and on behalf of CEMT organised the „KORAB CEMT Young 2020” under the Honorary Patronage of the Polish Ministry of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation and in co-operation with The Royal Institution of Naval Architects RINA  the oldest in the World society of naval architects, set in 1860 under the Honorary Patronage of the British Crown.

In 2019 the CEMT Board decided to organise an international conference specially dedicated to the young postgraduate researchers and engineers, not only European ones, where they can present their recent achievements. What was the background for the decision? It was found that the current system evaluating scientific achievements is not much in favour for the young researchers and in some way tends to exclude them from conferences and prevent from publishing papers in notable journals. In most, this tendency is due to not long enough work experience and as a consequence not enough recognised their academic achievements.

The „KORAB CEMT Young 2020” was just an attempt to open the new opportunities for young researchers and engineers. The idea was to held the conference as a traditional one in Gdynia, Poland. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was no possible. Therefore it was huge important not to lose the idea and as a consequence a formula of a webinar session was implemented. The peer review is to be taken after the conference and the selected papers shall be published in a distinguished scientific publication such as the International Journal of Maritime Engineering. This is to fulfil the CEMT Board decision undertaken at the last meeting on October 24, 2019 in Belgrade (Serbia).

The „KORAB CEMT Young 2020” gave very unique opportunities in presenting wide varieties of subjects during the three separate sessions in which the speakers could have presented their papers.

The Agenda and all the presentations are available HERE on the KORAB website: https://www.topkorab.org.pl/category/cemt-conference/

At the first session there were topics on the Design, Structure & Construction and papers were presented by the following speakers:

The second session focused on Machinery, Equipment & Emissions and the following speakers gave presentations:

During the third session presentations dealt with the Stability, Hydromechanics & Propulsion System by the following speakers:

Please visit KORAB website www.topkorab.org.pl for more details.

The speakers who took part in the sessions were coming from Australia, Belgium,  Italy, UK and of course from Poland. But the viewers were coming not only from the speakers’ countries but in addition to also from Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Serbia and Malesia. Please find below the map made on login addresses of the viewers.

It is easy to guess that in such a conference organised for the first time there must be some challenges which need to be overcome. One was quite obvious and it was the quality of the individual internet connection of every speaker and every viewer. The other one was not sufficient experience with a webinar session so it required some additional trainings to be finally successfully overcome.

It is to be stressed that the „KORAB CEMT Young 2020” was the first in Europe scientific conference in the field of maritime technology organised as a webinar session. It is also to be said that due to the enormous engagements of all the interested all obstacles were successfully overcome. Therefor we do hope that the conference can find its date in the diary of the European Maritime Technology schedule of the events for every year.

During the conference a couple of poling were taken. One of the question was the necessity of a conference specially dedicated to the Postgraduate. Results presented below prove this thesis.

The other one: how interesting ware subjects presented. Please see the results below:

Finally the viewers were asked on their general overview of the conference. And the answers are found to be very much in favour for the organisers, please see below.

SUMMARY
Received comments prove that the conference was welcome and highly rated. A webinar session has one but very important advantage over the traditional way. This is the cost of flights, hotels and catering reduced to zero. The weak point is lack of direct face to face contacts so this shall be addressed in the future and found remedy shall be implemented, if any.

It is not for the first time that the Polish naval architects are forerunners of the new solutions also in Europe. The ”KORAB CEMT Young 2020” is the first in Europe scientific conference specially dedicated to the young postgraduate researchers and engineers  from Poland, Europe and the World. Webinar session is a new exercise for the scientific conferences but occurred to work well in practice especially in the community of the young engineers so got a huge credit for being repeated in the future.

The webinar was run by Jerzy Czuczman (Mr) the CEO to the Polish SNAME “KORAB” and the RINA Fellow.