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FYORD Travel Grant Reports: June 2025

International Seaweed Symposium My name is Friederike Gronwald. I am a third-year PhD student in the Management Ecology of Marine Macrophytes Group (RU Experimental Ecology) at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research. My work focuses on the hydrodynamic and aerodynamic effects on the drifting behaviour of marine macrophytes with diverse morphologies in the Baltic […]

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Choose Joy over Structure – the Journey of my “Scientific” Career

Hi, Henrike here. You don’t know me? Well, we should change that. Formally, I’m a scientist, a science educator and communicator, and a project manager. Personally, I love taking my dog for walks on the beach, feeling the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I’m creative, curious, a bit chaotic, often […]

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FYORD Travel Grant Reports: May 2025

The ICYMARE conference in Bremen Hi, my name is Josephine, I am a student in the Master’s program Biological Oceanography at Geomar Helmholtz-Center for Ocean Research. I am currently writing my Master’s thesis at the Research and Technology Center (FTZ) in Büsum, which is part of Kiel University. My research focuses on the diversity and […]

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FYORD Travel Grant Reports: April 2025

The 17th Deep-Sea Biology Symposium in Hong Kong  I am Véronique Merten, a postdoc in the Deep-Sea Biology Group at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. In my research, I focus on deep-sea organisms, with a particular interest in squids (cephalopods) and whales (cetaceans). By combining environmental DNA analysis with techniques like biologging, net […]

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FYORD Travel Grant Reports: Conferences in Asia

17th DSBS HKUST, Hong Kong I am Julian Stauffer, a third-year PhD student in the Deep-Sea Biology working group at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. I work on benthic habitat mapping with hydroacoustic and imaging methods. My main study regions are oceanic island groups in the North-East Atlantic. I am mainly […]

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FYORD Travel Grant Reports: Master’s students travelling to international conferences

The American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (AGU24) I am Carlos Arenas, a doctoral researcher from the Marine Geodynamics department at the GEOMAR  Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. I investigate the thermal structure of the Pegasus Basin, located at the southern end of the Hikurangi Margin, New Zealand. By analyzing seismic records and modelling subsurface […]

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Not A Doctor: Lessons I’ve learned from quitting my PhD

I never considered myself a quitter. Usually, I finish what I have started: a 30 minutes high intensity workout after the Christmas holidays for example or the extended version of the third Lord of the Rings movie, also a bachelor program in environmental science and a master in marine science in Kiel. It’s not like […]

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FYORD Summer School “Dive Into Change”

Throwback to the FYORD summer school, organized by PostDocs for Master’s and PhD students At the beginning of this year, a group of postdocs from GEOMAR and Kiel University, with the great support of FYORD and PACT, came together to brainstorm ideas for a potential summer school tailored for Masters and PhD students in marine […]

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Empowering Mothers in Science

Women bring immense potential to science, yet they remain underrepresented in top academic and research roles. In 2022, over 52.3% of all students enrolled at German universities were women, and women earned more than 46% of doctorate degrees. But when it comes to university professors, this number drops dramatically to just 28% (Source: German Federal […]

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Lessons from failure: A researcher’s journey through a disastrous experiment

When in January 2020 I started my PhD in Plant Ecology, I felt a mix of enthusiasm and anxiety. I knew the journey I was beginning would be arduous, and that was even before the several events that ended up making it even tougher than I expected. What follows is a recap of perhaps the […]