Nadine Gerlach

ICYMARE is the largest meeting for young marine researchers in Germany. As part of the German Society for Marine Research (DGM), this yearly event is a great opportunity to build up an interdisciplinary network for marine scientist from different fields.

Last year I attended the conference by giving an oral presentation. I was very excited to present my PhD project for the first time in a professional atmosphere outside of my home institute. However, I noticed that even though molecular biology was represented in some talks and posters, there was no appropriate session for it. That is why I decided to join ICYMARE team and became a session host for microbial ecology. This year ICMARE consisted of 140 talks and over 70 posters organized in 20 scientific sessions, to which my session contributed with 18 talks and posters. I was more than happy about the great resonance on my session.

Besides the scientific program, ICYMARE is also offering workshops and excursions such as an academic CV workshop or working tour to different institutes. This is of great interest for any student thinking of presuming their educational and professional career at the hosting institute.

This year’s highlight to me was to talk of the keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Sheila Heymans, the executive director of the European Marine Board (EMB). The EMB is a non-governmental advisory board for marine research and technology which main objective is the transfer of knowledge between policy and the scientific community. In her talk she gave an overview on her work and how important networking was for her career. But most inspiring to me were her “life lessons” or advices for early career scientists.

In my opinion, ICYMARE is an ideal way to exchange ideas as well as to practice discussing research to like-minded researchers without the overwhelming character of an established scientific conference. I highly recommend this conference for any Master or PhD student studying the marine environment or planning to so.

Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Jan-Hendrik Hehemann for gi­ving me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on my project, as well as my colleagues and collaborators of my PhD project. Special thanks go to the ICYMARE team for organizing such an amazing event for the past 10 years!