Mini-Symposium in Teutoburger Wald

During the past few days, we had the yearly mini-symposium of our group, in the youth hostel Horn-Bad Meinberg in the Teutoburger Wald. This year, it was organized by Philipp Lemke, Naivy Nava and Soofia Khan-Ahmadi, supported as always by Cordula Kurth. After an introductory talk by Bruno Moerschbacher who gave an overview over twenty years of chitosan research in our group which owes so much to Nour Eddine “Nouri” El Gueddari, we had four poster sessions with six posters each, spread over two days. Six groups of five to six people toured the posters, spending 15 minutes at each poster - Cordula kept the time! Discussions were intense, and many ideas were born for future work. Our three undergraduates did a great job in presenting their work in short oral presentations on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, we had an adventurous trip up the “Externsteine”, and a barbecue in the evening with the awarding of the poster prizes - Jasper Wattjes won for the second time in a row. Wednesday morning was reserved for an intense discussion of the pros and cons of an electronic lab notebook following a comprehensive presentation by Christoph Engwer who is using an ELN since about two years. We decided to try and find out whether there are any plans in this direction at faculty or even university level, but rather not to wait for such a decision but to go for it soon. With a good life-work balance, this year’s mini-symposium was another highlight of our lab-year - thanks to the efforts of the organizing team, the excellent science presented, and the welcoming group spirit!