feat(sdu): add SDU PhD enquiry, verify thesis claims from source
Explore SDU Center for Energy Informatics PhD, Theme 2 (Predictive Maintenance and Asset Management of Smart Energy Networks), Odense DK, deadline 2026-08-20. JD scraped live via Playwright. Verified the master's thesis against the source PDF rather than the stored title alone: - Vibration-based condition monitoring of CNC machine tools; features are the dimensionless waveform, peak, pulse, margin and kurtosis indices. - Implemented a hybrid of rule-based reasoning and a 7-10-3 ANN. - Evaluation measured throughput and latency, not model accuracy: ~500 SPS pipeline against 72.9 kSPS sensors. - Corrects an earlier note in the same session: PSO was surveyed only and never implemented. Recorded under thesis_limits alongside the absence of real operational data and accuracy figures. Also records the ECTS relative grade (B, top 35%), the existence of English-language transcripts, and the concrete Bosch sensor-data types (defect management records, wafer inspection images, PCM electrical parameters) under BS-2. Adds the enquiry email sent to Prof. Bo Norregaard Jorgensen, which asks whether an industry candidate is viable and whether non-academic letters of recommendation are accepted. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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# Informal enquiry — SDU Center for Energy Informatics, PhD Theme 2
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**To:** bnj@mmmi.sdu.dk
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**Subject:** PhD Theme 2 (Predictive Maintenance) — enquiry from an industry data engineer
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Deadline: 20 Aug 2026. Verified against the thesis PDF on 2026-08-02 — see
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`claims.json` EDU-MENG for what may and may not be claimed.
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---
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Dear Professor Jørgensen,
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I am writing regarding the PhD positions in Energy Informatics (job ID 4159), specifically
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Theme 2 on predictive maintenance and asset management of smart energy networks. I come
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from industry rather than academia, and I would like to ask you directly whether that is a
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realistic profile for these positions before I invest in the full application.
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My master's thesis (M.Eng., Universität der Bundeswehr München, carried out at Tongji
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University Shanghai, graded 1.0) built a remote fault diagnosis system for CNC machine
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tools from vibration sensor data, using the dimensionless waveform, peak, pulse, margin and
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kurtosis indices as features. I deliberately combined two diagnosis methods: rule-based
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reasoning for interpretable physical thresholds, and a small feed-forward neural network
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for the noisy cases that static rules cannot separate — an early attempt at the
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interpretability trade-off that Theme 2 also raises. It was a methods prototype validated
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on benchmark and synthetic data, not on operational data, and its most useful finding was a
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negative one: the diagnosis pipeline sustained roughly 500 samples per second while the
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vibration sensors it was meant to serve delivered 72.9 kSPS. The model was never the
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bottleneck. The data path was.
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I then spent thirteen years building exactly that data path. At Bosch Semiconductor
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Manufacturing Dresden I worked on analytics for fab sensor and process data — defect
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management records, wafer inspection images, and electrical parameters from process control
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monitoring — including integrating containerised ML inference into a 24/7 production
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environment. I am currently a data engineer at Swisscom, where I build and own governed
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data products within the company-wide data mesh on AWS, together with the pipelines and the
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metadata and lineage behind them. That work is explicitly the foundation layer for the AI
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strategy the company intends to build on top, and the argument I make daily is much the
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same one Theme 2 makes for energy infrastructure: trustworthy, well-described operational
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data is the precondition for anything downstream.
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Theme 2 lists sensor measurements, operational data, inspection records and asset
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information as the sources to be combined. Integrating precisely those categories into
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something reliable enough for other people to make decisions on has been my job for over a
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decade — but always under delivery pressure, where the honest answer to "how well does this
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actually generalise" is usually "we did not have time to find out". A PhD is the deliberate
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move back into a setting where that question can be answered properly, and I would like to
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bring the operational side of the problem with me rather than leave it behind.
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On location: I am fully aware the positions are in Odense and I see the move as part of the
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attraction rather than a cost. I have lived and worked in Norway, I hold German citizenship
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and currently live in Switzerland, and returning to Scandinavia is something I would
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genuinely welcome.
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Two questions, if I may:
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1. Does the centre see a candidate coming from industry after this long as a realistic fit,
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or does the assessment process in practice favour applicants moving directly from a
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master's programme?
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2. The application asks for two letters of recommendation. My academic referees are
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thirteen years in the past. Would letters from current and former managers and
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colleagues be acceptable, or must at least one come from academia? I also hold German
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employment references (Arbeitszeugnisse), though I appreciate these are a national
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format that may not travel well.
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I would be glad to send my CV if that is useful.
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With kind regards,
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Dennis Thiessen, M.Eng.
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Bern, Switzerland
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dennis@thiessen.io · +41 795 955 585
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linkedin.com/in/dennis-thiessen
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