Research into light pollution in Malaysia Imagine you are walking along the promenade or through your favorite street at night. What do you see? The glow of streetlights, ship lights, illuminated shop windows. You probably see something, right? While actually, it should be dark. The issue at hand is light pollution. Artificial light at night […]
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 […]
The Challenger Expedition – Marine Research then and now
Last month 150 years ago, on the 23rd of March 1875, the participants of the Challenger expedition plumbed out the deepest point of the Earth, which is now called the Challenger Deep in their honour. This expedition was different from previous endeavours, as scientific exploration was its primary objective, not just a useful side-quest to […]
A geological sleigh ride with Santa
“Peppy! Did you know…?” Oh, crinkly candy, here we go again. We were hours into Christmas night on our way back north, somewhere over the African Atlantic Coast and the Boss kept talking about geology. Listening to Santa Claus rambling was one of the many perks not mentioned in the job description of the prestigious […]
How to grow in the shadows
I walk through the forest and see a few old and sturdy trees, that are dominating their surroundings. I look up and see how they sway in the wind, but they bend and hold and aren’t bothered in the slightest. Down here in their shadow, I am surrounded by an army of saplings. Most of […]
FYORD Travel Grant Reports: Impressions from the largest European geoscientific conference (Part 1)
With this blog post, we would like to introduce and launch our new cooperation with FYORD! FYORD is a joint network by CAU and GEOMAR initiated to connect and support Early Career Researchers of the marine sciences from Master’s to PostDoc level. After occasional exchanges in the past (see our blog here), we are very […]
From Hypatia to Marie Tharp – Some women you should know
This blog post was inspired by the books “Forces of Nature – The Women who Changed Science” by Anna Reser and Leila McNeill and “Women in Science – 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World“ by Rachel Ignotofsky. Both shed light on a wide variety of women in science and their contributions. Here, I was […]
At the beginning there was bureaucracy
Last year in summer I finished my Master’s degree. I was, and still am, very much in love with science, and enjoyed my research-focussed program a lot. No surprise that I wanted to pursue a scientific career, and that I was very happy I had managed to secure a PhD position as the next step […]
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 […]
“Drama, Baby!” Meine Erfahrungen im Wissenschaftskommunikationszertifikatsprogramm
November 2023, ich stehe auf der großen Bühne in der Pumpe, einem Veranstaltungszentrum in Kiel. Vor mir sitzen etwa 200-250 Leute, die Sitzplätze sind alle besetzt und ein paar Leute müssen sogar stehen. Sie sind bereit, zwei Stunden lang zu stehen, um zu erleben, wie junge Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler bei der Science Show ihre Forschung […]