Final spurt of Summer students blog
Summerstudents after their visit of BESSY II. © Klaus-Martin Höfer
Screenshot of the blog.
A new blog features the experiences of HZB’s summer students in 2014. In total 24 students have come from Japan, Denmark, India, Spain, Greece, Russia or other countries. For 8 weeks, during August and September, they are working on a project in a science team at the HZB. They are young and motivated, willing to sacrifice their summer holidays and to spend them in a lab instead!
But they do not only make their first steps in science, they are also participating in a communication project, the hzb2014summerschool - Blog: Some of them do write about life in Berlin, others about their first research experiences. Up to now, the blog contains 22 posts, 24 comments and has had more than 1000 visitors.
These last two weeks, we expect more posts, more traffic and more comments. The summerschool-blog project is not only entertaining and nice to read for future students for instance but provides aslo an informal training of communication skills.
Please do have a look!
The Blog: http://hzb2014summerschool.wordpress.com/
- Marcel Risch has been appointed Professor at the Freie Universität BerlinMarcel Risch was appointed to a W2-S professorship in the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin in August 2026. His research group has been transformed into the department 'Mechanisms of Sustainable Electrocatalysis'. Risch investigates the fundamental mechanisms of electrocatalytic reactions and, on this basis, develops knowledge- and data-driven strategies to improve electrocatalysts for the sustainable production of hydrogen, fuels and chemicals.
- Hatice Mutlu appointed to the Helmholtz Institute HIPOLE in JenaProf. Dr Hatice Mutlu is the new professor of sustainable polymer chemistry at HIPOLE Jena, the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications. On 17 August 2026, she visited the HZB campus in Berlin-Adlershof including the BESSY II lightsource and discussed future collaboration with researchers and the board of directors.
- From Colombia to Berlin: Finding My Way in a New WorldIt was almost 11 p.m. when I arrived in Berlin. After a long journey from Colombia, all I wanted was to get to my accommodation, take a shower, and finally sleep.
Instead, I missed my train. Thinking it would follow the same route as the previous one as it would in my hometown of Medellín I confidently boarded the next train. About twenty minutes later, I realized something was wrong. I was heading in the wrong direction.
As if that was not enough, my phone battery was almost empty. Suddenly, I found myself alone in a city I had never visited before, late at night, speaking a language I did not understand, with no idea how to get back.
This was not how I had imagined the beginning of my first international trip....