After the establishment of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) IEEE student branch last year, the second student branch in Denmark has been established in Aalborg University (AAU) recently.

We thought it might be helpful for other emerging student branches to learn how we set about creating our own.

Everything began last year, when I came to Denmark for my master degree and realized that there have never been any student branches in Denmark, whereas IEEE Denmark section was established in 1968. It was quite interesting for me as a former chairman of Sabanci University student branch in Turkey, where there are more than 30 active student branches.

After contacting two Denmark section officers, Jan Madsen and Tom Høholdt from DTU for support, I sent emails to all student members in Denmark and with a small group in the beginning; we succeeded to establish the first student branch in Denmark last year, with the support of Basak Yuksel from R8 SAC and doubled the student members in DTU.

This first initiative got some responses from AAU and I met Imadur Rahman, current chairman of the student branch in AAU, last summer to talk about establishing the second student branch. Afterwards, they also formed a very strong group in Aalborg and now we have two active student branches in Denmark, with the strong support of our young section chairman, Christian Kloch.

We are contacting all IEEE members in Danish industry in order to make an industry database for IEEE student members with internship, project and job offers. In addition, we will organize an industry-student meeting, where both parts can learn about each other’s expectations. Presentations from departments to show students current research areas and possible projects and company visits are a few examples of the activities that this 2 young student branches are focusing on for now.

Nordic regional student branches meeting is one of the future plans and we are waiting for the responses of other Nordic student branches. We are also looking for student branches to have knowledge sharing meetings with us both in Copenhagen and in their cities.

Emre Ayranci
Denmark Section Student Representative

[pic above shows Emre, Michael and Imad from the founder executive committee of DTU student branch]