Last week, some of our team members traveled to Florence to participate in the doctoral workshop "Digitalization in the Built Environment". This took place within the international PhD exchange program of three universities. Among others, Alessandro Bruttini was involved in the planning of this meeting, who worked with us at the IIB for a few months as part of an exchange and will be back again in 2023.

On Wednesday, Jonas Maibaum, Philipp Hagedorn, Liu Liu and Sven Zentgraf started their journey to Florence to participate in the International Doctoral Workshop. The aim of the event, entitled "Digitization in the Build Environment", was to exchange research ideas between the various doctoral students, to network, and to gather new ideas and inspiration to improve their own research. The participants were not only researchers from the Università degli Studi di Firenze and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, but also from Teesside University in Middlesbrough UK, Politecnico di Milano, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Università degli Studi dell'Aquila and Università Politecnica delle Marche.

The event started with keynotes by Prof. Markus König and another one by Prof. Farzad Pour Rahimian and Prof. Nashwan Dawood. Afterwards, the participating PhD students presented the work areas and topics of their dissertations to each other. The workshop was closed by Prof. Pietro Capone from the Dipartimento di Architettura (DIDA). The exchange between the universities is to be continued in the future, initially through the second research stay of Alessandro Bruttini next year.

Lastly, the cultural program of the city of Florence was not missed out. Among others, the Cathedral (Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria del Fiore), the Uffizi Gallery and local sights were visited. The local cuisine was also explored in depth by our PhD students and Markus König.

Thank you very much for the exciting workshop, we are looking forward to next time!