Nicolaus still seems happy with us.

Today, as every year, Nicolaus came to our institute, and he seems to again appreciate our performance towards and beyond Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher’s retirement. Yes, we are getting fewer, but we are still strong! The last Bachelor and Master students and the last doctoral researchers of our group are nearing their final months in the lab, but a strong group of post-doctoral researchers will keep things going for a little while longer. They have even submitted proposals for new projects which – if, as we hope and trust, they will be successful – will continue our legacy at the Fraunhofer Institute IME here in Münster to which Bruno is now affiliated. So far, we had an incredible 15 papers and 1 patent published this year, with a total of 98.2 impact factor points. Admittedly, in some of these, we are “just” co-authors, often for chitosan analytics performed by Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr, but even so, this leaves a more than satisfying scientific harvest of the year. We also visited a few conferences, among them the first two stops of Bruno’s “farewell” tour, to APCCS in Taipei, Taiwan, and to ICCC/SIAQ in Hermosillo, Mexico – in both cases, he was invited to try and look back at the achievements of our group over the past thirty years and, of course, to try and look ahead at what will come. All in all: very satisfying, rewarding, and promising perspectives. The best is yet to come!