Joint AgriPoly II Retreat

Three weeks ago our joint AgriPoly II retreat took place in Kloster Nimbschen (Grimma).
The two days were packed with scientific contributions, exchange and connection.
60 members of both school parts Agri-EXPLORE and POLY-Sustainable Polymers have been present.

After the arrival at the location, the registration took place, poster were hung up, coffees were drunk and the day was started by some opening remarks of the coordinators of Agri, Amanda Ratier Backes, and of POLY, Lea Ueberham.
After an insightful talk about the Background and Vision of AgriPoly II by Daniel Wefers, the speaker of POLY, announced his successor Frederik Haase (POLY), who is together with Thomas-Thurn-Albrecht (POLY), Edgar Peiter (Agri) and Sven-Erik Behrens (Agri) the new speaker team for the upcoming AgriPoly II time. Thomas-Thurn-Albrecht gave us an introduction into polymer science and Edgar Peiter into plant sciene to bridge Agri and POLY and to bring everyone to an understanding level of the topics relevant in the other graduate school part.

In the afternoon of the first day half of the Phd candidates of AgriPoly II presented their Phd Project in only 4 minutes with max. 2  slides, followed by an interesting poster session. The day was rounded off by the keynote talk of Andreas Weber (CEPLAS – Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences), on “Improving photosynthetic efficiency toward food security”. After a short guided tour to the closter monastry, the barbecue-style dinner and networking part, closed the day.

On the second day, the other half of Phd candidates of AgriPoly II presented their Phd projects in flash talks and posters. After a transfer workshop for the Phd candidates, held by Stephanie Jahn of Transfer- und Gründungsservice MLU Halle and a PI meeting held in parallel, the last presentation of the retreat took place. Karsten Mäder and Sven-Erik Behrens presented a successful transfer story. The retreat was closed by POLY-speaker Frederik Haase who announced the winners of the poster prizes. Congratulations to the four second prize winners Jeremy Quast, Marcel Schöffmann, Johannes Kündiger, Vanessa Brückner and the first prize winner Lieselotte Rauh. Well done!