This year's Research Conference was held on 26th of April 2024. The day before, many helping hands prepared the venue carefully, setting up chairs, poster walls and tables. All of this was led by Dr Hannah Hartung, who was the main organiser of the event. Thank you very much!

At 10 am, the first excited PhD students arrived to make sure they had enough time to hang up their carefully prepared posters. A quick glance at the programme revealed the poster number and everyone found their allocated space. By 10:30 most people had arrived, received their name badge and lots of goodies like new pens, bags or writing pads from the Geoverbund ABC/J (who thankfully sponsered part of the event - many thanks again!) and the Graduate School of Geosciences itself.

After a short welcome by Dr. Hannah Hartung the first poster session started. This Research Conference was different from previous years, as this time the PhD students took centre stage. Instead of external speakers, our PhD students were asked to give short pitch talks to introduce their own research and convince people to come and see their posters afterwards. Throughout the day we learned about the effects of climate change, soils, geoarchaeology, the atmosphere and many other topics. It was a great opportunity for the candidates to practice speaking to a wide scientific audience. A total of 25 people prepared a poster and presented their research in three different poster sessions. 

Following a lunch break the general assembly and elections took place. During the General Assembly, the spokesperson of the GSGS, Prof. Boris Braun, highlights important milestones that have been achieved in 2023 by the GSGS, its coordinators and the Steering Committee including restructuring processes within the GSGS, membership numbers, financial reporting and an outlook for the upcoming training planned in 2024. We congratulate the (old) new Doctoral Candidate representatives in the GSGS Steering Committee: Camila Javiera Riffo Contreras (deputy: Felix Reize) and Stefan Schöttle (deputy: Mirijam Zickel). and thank them in advance for all the work and time they will spend for the community!

At the end of the Research Conference everyone was invited to vote for their favourite poster. The winners of the GSGS Audience Poster Award 2024 are:
Paula Bigalke - Investigation of climatic changes for hailstorms over the Alps using self-supervised machine learning
Felix Reize - Geoarchaeological investigations in the vicinity of the ancient metropolis of Uruk, southern Iraq
Rizwan Khaleel - The Impact of Eco-Corona on the Transport of Microplastics and Co-Transport of Heavy Metals in Floodplain Soils
Many Congratulations!

In the evening the 10th anniversary of the GSGS was celebrated. Read more about this in another blog post.

We thank everyone who came and made this day possible. Especially the people who have always thought of ways to support the GSGS staff. It was greatly appreciated!  

More impressions can be found here. 
The next GSGS Research Conference will take place on 23rd of May, 2025