Winter School in Ratzeburg

Our third TRR 181 Winter School took place at the youth hostel in Ratzeburg. More than 40 PhDs, Postdocs and PIs enjoyed sun and science near the lake in Ratzeburg.

We held our annual Winter School for our early career scientists at the Youth Hostel in Ratzeburg this year. We focused on career development workshops during the first half of the week and on science during the second half.

We started the week with a focus on the research landscape Germany. How does the German system work? What is the WissZeitVG? And how do I get funding, if I like to stay in science? Those were the questions tackled in the presentation by Meike Ruhnau. Key message was: although it looks grim, there is always hope.

After lunch, Liz Elvidge and Rachel Herries from the Imperial College London took over with their career development workshop. The PhDs and Postdocs had time to reflect on their personal path that led them to their current position and learned about how important CV writing is.

On the second day, the group split into PhDs and Postdocs. Here, the focus lay on writing of cover letters and interview skills.

The participants enjoyed the workshop although some topics could have needed a little bit more time. For some, the workshop could have happened sooner, but for most, it was just the right time. The future however, is still unknown for most of our young scientists.

On Wednesday, the focus shifted to the scientific part of the project. In the morning, the participants had two more workshops on “How to pitch your science” and “How to give effective feedback”. Both workshops were held in preparation for the poster sessions, since the participants needed to pitch their science to three randomly assigned feedback givers.

We held two poster sessions, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday. The participants regarded these as very helpful. Especially the feedback process was seen as beneficial, although there could have been even more time for the poster session. Some of our PIs - Carsten Eden, Christian Franzke and Marcel Oliver- attended the poster session to get an overview about Scientific work.

On Wednesday there was another outreach task group meeting. It was a lively discussion about the current status of the scrollytelling, how to spread the explainity movies and the next big event, the Sommer des Wissens in Hamburg in June.

Thursday and Friday morning, some of our Postdocs held talks on their work. The participants especially like the effort the speakers took to make sure everyone understood what they are doing. We like to thank Anton Kutsenko, Claus Goetz, Janna Köhler and Urs Schaeffer-Rolffs for their contributions.

During the evenings, most of the group gathered in the foyer to play table tennis, “Kicker” or pool. Also the Wi-Fi was strongest there.

On Wednesday evening, we all went out to dinner were we decided to plan a TRR 181 movie, but only if we can get Meryl Streep and Jessica Alba to participate. Still working on that.

You can find the talks, workshop notes and pictures on our internal webpage and a picture gallery with a selection of pics below.

  • Poster session

  • Poster session

  • Poster session

  • Poster session

  • Poster session

  • Poster session

  • Scenic Ratzeburg

  • Career development workshop

  • Career development workshop

  • Career development workshop

  • Short break in the sun!

  • There is...

  • ...always time...

  • ...for discussion!