Schedule

Three days full of opportunities to network and to train your skills for multidisciplinary collaborations

Three days full of program and opportunities to network.

Scientific Program

Represent your institute

Working in science, we all learn to present our work scientifically and professionally. But have you explained your thesis to scientists in completely different fields? In this session each center (re)presents their Helmholtz research center in one minute in a fun and comprehensive way to doctoral researchers from all Helmholtz centers. Get inspired by last year’s winner GEOMAR’s (re)presentation.

Workshops

You can choose one of three workshops: scientific communication, poster presentation, or Yooweedoo changemaker project.

Alumni session

The session will consist of 10 alumni that have completed a succesful doctoral thesis at one of our 18 research centers in Germany. Initially there will be an initial short presentation of each alumnus to provide an overview, and subsequently the alumni will be issued their own station which the doctoral researchers can visit and ask questions as they please, and listen to the alumni's experience. It should be an informal session, and the doctoral researchers should feel free to ask any questions to the alumni. In addition some refreshments, such as coffee, tea and biscuits, will be provided for this session. The session will last about 2 hours. Get impressions from last years alumni session.

Evening activities

BBQ and ice breakes

Taste John's Burger and listen to his amazing story from beeing a Helmholtz scientist and professor to grilling Kiels most famous burger!

Bring your instrument and join our jam session!

Are you better with words on stage? Then bring a presentation / photo slide show and participate in the Science Slam / Pecha Kucha!

Conference dinner

By this time you will have met many doctoral researchers from other Helmholtz centers, but how much do you know about the Helmholtz Association, the different centers and their scientific research? Find out and learn even more during our Pub Quiz!

The Quiz will take place during the dinner on Thursday on board of the traditional paddle steamer Freya, a boat built in 1905 which takes you for an exclusive trip over the Kiel Fjord. It will be a 3-hour tour with a delicious dinner buffet and a very special view over the city at dusk.

Optional activities

Your PhD in one Photo

Do you have a pretty stam cell picture, an awesome figure, a pretty map or just amazing images from your last field trip? Then participate in our photo contest! Send us your picture/image/figure and a short description of how your piece of art relates to your doctoral project.

Email your contribution to nextgen@helmholtz.de using the reference: "NextGen Photo contest" until June 1st.

Aquarium

Think science cannot be cute?! Then attend the seal feeding at the GEOMAR Aquarium on Wednesday morning, 10:00am, and watch our four cuties hunting for fish!

If you are a really early bird, then be at the pier in front of the GEOMAR Aquarium at around 9:15am and watch the Color line maneuvering. See, how Europe's biggest passenger ferry tightly turns in the small Kiel fjord to dock.

Beach trip

Summer. Sun. Beach! Stay longer in Kiel and join our trip to Laboe - a wide, sandy beach at the northern tip of the Kiel fjord. Famous for its submarine museum and perfect kite surf conditions!

Here you can find the booklet with all the abstracts of the participants in the Poster Session and the Art Contest.

The N² event will also have its own poster session and we invite all participants to sign up for presenting a poster. But be warned: This is not a normal poster session! Unlike any other conference, the N² event will provide you with poster visitors from many areas of expertise, some of them very different from your own. This means that you have to prepare a poster anybody can understand. Think about how you could explain it to your grandma. This challenge is a unique opportunity to get some hands-on experience and practice communicating your research to the public. Posters here are not about results and references. They are about showing people what your research topic is in a way that others can understand quickly. As long as you follow this goal, you can get as creative as you want. Since our event is all about new ways of communication, this is your chance to explore and experiment with how to best communicate your science. Don’t be too focused on classical poster guidelines. Use lots of figures or photos to show people what you do. Or how about including a video? Think of it as a science slam on a poster, if you like! Make sure your texts are short, concise and that your poster is well-organized to help readers grasp the important information quickly.And there is a poster price, too…

Poster guidelines

We will provide poster walls for posters of size A0 (841 × 1189 mm) and portrait orientation. Texts and figures need to be large enough to be viewed from a good distance. When your application for a poster is successful, you will be given a poster number. On the day of the conference, look for the poster wall with your number on it and mount your poster there, pins will be provided. Please make sure your poster is mounted before the poster session and remove it before you leave the venue. In the poster award, an interdisciplinary jury will judge your poster on how well the content is presented and how easy it was to understand for somebody from a non-related field. So make sure to prepare a poster that can be understood by everybody! For your inspiration, have a look at our poster template!If you want to register for the Poster Session you will have to upload a short abstract. Please use our abstract templates for Microsoft Word or LaTex and the official N² Logo.

Collaboration/Research partnership opportunities – your ad here!

Are you looking for someone from a different field to collaborate with you on your project? Somebody to fill your questionnaires? Somebody to help with your statistics? Your bio-informatics? Look no further: If you would like some input from outside your research area or if you can offer some to people from another field, just fill this form and put it next to your poster.

During the N2 Science communication, there will be the opportunity to present your creativity during an art competition, so consider submitting an entry from you. This is your chance to showcase your creative side and your research! A democratic vote such as a committee will be taken to determine the winners, each visitor of the conference can not only view but also rate the entries during the conference. Awards will be given for the first three places, which will be announced on the last day of the conference.Eligible entries include (but are not limited to): Any kind of images (collages are also allowed), paintings, drawings, sculptures, or sketches, nearly everything is allowed, only limitation: All with a connection to your own research (if you are uncertain if your art will fulfil the criteria or if you have something very special in your mind, you can contact the organisers, please.)Your art should include the title, artists / affiliations and brief explanation. Submission indicates your permission for your artwork to be displayed on the website, on social media and in flyers / magazines.

Submissions must be:

A piece of art directly connected to your research
New and original, not posted on the internet before
Announced with a small description of your art piece

If you want to register for the Art Contest you will have to upload a short abstract. Please use our abstract templates for Microsoft Word or LaTex and the official N² Logo.

We will offer four workshops running in parallel in the morning and in the afternoon. Thus, every participant has the chance to attend two of them. The workshops address important questions around the topic of science communication. How do you best write an article for a general audience? What is the best way of visualising your data? And how can you enhance your research impact within and beyond academia?

How to Write a Popular Science Article - Benjamin Denes

Improve your writing skills for the massesHow to write a science news story or a feature based on a research paper? This two-hour-crash-course gives you useful hints and techniques for breaking down complex subjects to clear stories, that a broad audience can understand. It is the aim of the course, to show the participants how to find a spin to a complex topic, how to compose the several parts of your story, finding the right language and multimedia assets. Additionally we focus on the online specific marketing aspect - writing teasers and headlines that engage the readers to click on it and to read the article. In a short exercise the participants can train and apply their newly acquired knowledge.

Impact training - Rosmarie Katrin Neumann

The training Impact Dialog will enable you to enhance your research impact within and beyond academia. This includes communication skill sets that will increase visibility and therefore employability for your career beyond your PhD studies.Part 1: Working with policy makersGiven that scientists and policy makers often have “distinct” languages, time tables, agendas, networks ect., we will elaborate potential ways to bridge this divide and to form relationships that can ensure scientific evidence to be considered in decision making.Part 2: Social MediaSocial media platforms will be addressed, success stories collected and so you are empowered to use them to increase your impact, e.g. for your personal outreach and communication strategy.

Data Visualisation in the wild - Gwilym Lockwood

How to turn numbers into picturesYou've done your experiments, finished your analysis, and worked out what your results are. But how do you turn those numbers into pictures? As researchers, you might be used to bar graphs and error bars, but designing graphs, charts, and infographics for a wider audience requires a different approach. In this workshop, I'll go through how data visualisation is used in industry, cover some of the basic skills in Tableau, and talk about how to move into data visualisation from a PhD.

The Art of Presenting Science - Gijs Meeusen

Present, reach & involveIn this course you will learn how to use theatre skills and story construction tools to improve the way you present. The combination of these two themes has a substantial impact on your (scientific) presentations and allows you to do justice to the content and to yourself as a presenter. You will acquire skills that turn your presentations into an unforgettable and inspiring experience.

As representation of a part of the humanities, PhD students of the Art history plan on showing their communication skills in several guided tours through a selected museum in Berlin. Every guide will choose a museum of his/her liking and will present on a couple of art works their knowledge and research in the field of art history. This can vary in time and material depending on the chosen art and museum. Let yourself surprise and you might discover something new and interesting.Please let us know if you are interested in participating (there should be a button in the registration process) and we will plan accordingly. There will be max. 15 people per group.

After a day of talks and workshops, join us for a PubQuiz! We will test your general (and not so general) knowledge in several interdisciplinary rounds and do our best to keep you entertained. So refresh your trivia knowledge and come win a prize!