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The Perspective of a retired Hiwi

HiWi is the abbreviation for the German term ‘Hilfs-Wissenschaftler*in’, which translates to research assistant, and describes a job position for students, often offered by faculties or research institutes. I am definitely not talking about the second definition given by German Wikipedia. For nearly six years I’ve been one of many HiWis, going through research groups […]

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Back to school with Rent-a-Scientist 2023

My experience with teaching geophysics to high-school students It all started with a rather inconspicuous email with the subject title: Do you fancy primary schools? I got quite confused. Why would I get such a message? I am not a teacher. Hmm. Luckily, I decided to read the email anyway. It said something about a […]

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Science – at the edge of knowledge

One of the biggest realizations during my PhD so far was that doing science means that literally nobody has ever done whatever you are doing. Duh! That’s kind of the point of science, isn’t it? Generating new knowledge? Yes, but I was somewhat unaware of the consequences for me as a scientist. In a nutshell: […]

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Why a hackathon has nothing to do with coding!

If you  received  an invite to a “Hackathon” event – would you sign up for it? Chances are, if you’re not a programmer by training, studied IT or went far down the rabbit hole called modelling for your research, your answer will be thanks for the invitation, but no thanks. “No way!” was my first reaction […]

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The Second Sight of Science

I was probably about thirteen years old. I wanted to put pasta into a pot of boiling water, when I suddenly stopped and stared at the bubbling liquid. It’s not like I had never seen boiling water before, but I had never seen it like this. Instead of just noticing the movement and the steam […]

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From industry to science

„How to move from academia to industry (or to the private sector)?” is a question, that I often hear since I started my doctoral thesis. But before, my question was rather “How do I move from industry to academia?”. In fact, after my studies in geosciences and mining engineering, I didn’t want to engage myself […]