A new Dr. rer. nat.: Margareta Hellmann was officially awarded her doctoral degree and her doctoral hat

Today, Margareta “Maggi” Hellmann finalized her doctoral voyage with presenting it in three minutes to her guests and those of her twelve fellow doctoral candidates. Not an easy task given that her thesis contained nine manuscripts on almost 400 pages. But explaining the complex science to a festive crowd convened to celebrate is not the real idea of the event anyway. Rather, it is to give credit and say thanks to those helpful minds and hands of colleagues and friends in the lab who have accompanied the journey, but even more so the hearts of friends and family who have supported the journey in times of lively storms and dead calms. Maggi sailed through all of them unharmed, not least because of these faithful companions who supported her willingly and as strongly as she always supports them. No problem seems too heavy for Maggi and no obstacle too high. In fact, sometimes, she gives the feeling that they are not heavy or high enough. Her accomplishments are manifold – both in developing new analytical methods and in gaining in depth understanding of how a fungal pathogen can hide from its human host’s immune system. And she keeps churning out more manuscripts for publications based on data and insights she generated during her thesis and since. We were not surprised, but still happy, to find out today that the third, external and unknown referee of her thesis had also, like the two internal referees before, marked it as “summa cum laude” – excellent!