A couple of weeks ago, all of us Vulcanus participants attended a pre-departure meeting in Brussels. This was the first time we got to meet each other—what an exciting couple of days that was! The EU-Japan Centre kindly provided us with accommodation in a very nice hotel, so we had quite a lot of time to mingle and explore Brussels. Although the strong military presence around the city was a bit unsettling, we got to see quite a bit of it and its landmarks. Pro tip: when visiting a 5€ waffle shop, always check the shops next door if they offer better waffles for a whole lot less. Sorry about the not-too-great picture, it’s the only one where all of us are together.

Now let’s look at some statistics. We’re as diverse this year as any other, with 34 participants from 16 countries. Spain and Poland are, unsurprisingly, still leading the charge and we have the first ever Macedonian participant. I’m also the lone Slovene this year, down one from the two participants last year. The distribution seems quite regular compared to previous years (subjective opinion, no hard analysis was performed).

I’m not completely sure about our age range, but the majority of participants being 22 - 25 seems like a safe bet. While I can’t yet disclose the distribution of companies (the Centre will publish a document on their Vulcanus page about that), I can tell you that the majority of us are computer science students, followed by electrical engineering or similar, then chemical engineering, and we even have an architect among us. The distribution among the sexes is also quite regular.

That’s about it. See you next time!