Nikolaus appears to be happy with us

It is already a tradition that Nikolaus visits us in the night from December 5 to 6, to bring his chocolate-self to each of our team members, as a token of his appreciation of our efforts and successes during the past year. Seems like we pleased him again! And right he is, as it most certainly has been another successful year. We will still wait with a final evaluation until the day of our Christmas party, as the year is not over yet. But we can already state that we will have published more papers than last year - and equally good ones! - even though we had less students finishing their Master theses and less young researchers obtaining their doctoral degrees. There were 35 Nikolauses - Nikoläuse this year, down from 41 last year. Slowly, we are trying to reduce our numbers. Sadly, this is required now that Nouri is no longer with us, but it is difficult with so many excellent and enthusiastic students eager to work with us. Fortunately, some of our former doctoral candidates are still with us as post-doctoral researchers now, supporting the younger ones in their projects. Made Nikolaus happy!