Nadine Gerlach
Report of GLOMAR PhD student Nadine Gerlach about her participation in the Conference for Young Marine Researchers "YOUMARES 9" 2018 in Oldenburg, Germany from 12 to 14 September 2018
YOUMARES 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.
I was very excited to present my PhD project for the first time in a professional atmosphere outside of my home institute. In my opinion, YOUMARES 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.
Besides sessions like chemical and plankton ecology, which are of great importance for my PhD project, there were also sessions, which have widened my perspective and understanding as a marine scientist in general, but also have gained further insights for my professional career in marine sciences outside academia.
One afternoon was kept free of talks and blocked for a variety of workshops: Publishing in Natural Sciences, Knowledge transferrin marine science, Young scientists wanted to develop a small scale fisheries academy, Low budget underwater stereogrammery, Quick maps for publications using GMT – the free open source way. In my opinion it is of great importance for young scientist to train their writing skills as early as possible as well to learn the difference to communicate their research with other scientists but also with the public. This is why I attended to the workshop How to turn science into a story?, which was held by a former marine scientist who is now a freelance writer for scientific and public science magazines.
YOUMARES10 is taking place at MARUM, University Bremen, in 2019 to which I would like to contribute by organizing a session on microbial ecology since this topic was a bit underrepresented for now.
I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Jan-Hendrik Hehemann for giving me the opportunity to work on my project, GLOMAR for financial support and my colleagues and collaborators of my PhD project. Special thanks goes to the YOUMARES scientific committee for organizing such an amazing event. I highly recommend this conference for any Master or PhD student studying the marine environment or planning to so. You gonna enjoy it!
