2021 MAP poster session and awards ceremony successfully held online
Event very much in the spirit of MAP: Trying out new things and seeking excellence!
In the afternoon of February 12th 2021, the annual Poster Session and Awards Ceremony of the Elite Masters Programme in Advanced Materials and Processes (MAP) took place. Due to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic this event, usually one of the social highlights of the MAP calendar, moved online for the very first time. Among the up to 100 participants we were pleased to welcome current and prospective MAP students, lecturers, researchers and administrative staff. We were also delighted to be joined by guests from the MAPEX Center for Materials and Processes (University of Bremen) and Dr. Andreas Hoff (Evonik Industries AG and MAP Advisory Board Member).
The MAP Poster Session is the culmination of a scientific skills course led in the Winter Semester by Prof. Robin Klupp Taylor and attended by the current third semester students (the 2019 MAP batch in the case of this year’s event). To enable a digital poster session which offers the same degree of personal interactions as a traditional, analogue session, Prof. Klupp Taylor developed a concept based on two complementary online platforms: MURAL and zoom. All the posters could be seen on the former, which is an interactive online whiteboard. Participants could easily navigate and read any of the posters and also leave questions or comments in the form of sticky notes. One definite advantage of a digital poster over an analogue one was exploited by several students – to include movies of simulations or microscopical investigations directly on the poster! The MURAL also acted as the gateway to the plenary zoom sessions, and, by clicking on the students’ photo next to each poster, participants could enter a zoom meeting with that student and discuss the poster there.
The third semester MAP students presented a total of 29 posters based on either their MAP miniproject or their bachelor’s thesis. The approximately two and a half hour event was divided into two sessions. The first of these covered projects relating to the MAP focal subjects Advanced Processes and Computational Materials Science and Process Simulation. The second was dedicated to the Focal Subject Biomaterials and Bioprocessing and Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology. Each started with a plenary meeting on zoom. To help participants get a quick overview of the posters the students held so-called “superflash talks”. In these 1 minute presentations the students introduced themselves and gave a very brief overview of their poster. After the talks the session moved to the MURAL and individual scientific discussions between the presenters and participants on Zoom.
Participants concluded that it was an amazing poster session of extremely high quality regarding the level of digital presentation and the academic contributions of the students. All posters reached the standard required for presentation at international conference. MAP chair Prof. Erik Bitzek stated: “This poster presentation shows the identity of MAP. The spirit of trying out new things and formats is combined with great research as well as with excellent preparation and performance. I learnt a lot from our MAP students.”
After the second session of poster presentations the event concluded in a plenary session dedicated to prize-giving. Firstly, the Best Student Award for the 2019 MAP batch was announced by MAP chair Prof. Nicolas Vogel. This went to Nayeon Kang (Republic of Korea) for excellence in her academic achievement and her dedication in supporting her fellow students and feedback to the MAP administration as a class representative. It was then in the latter capacity that Nayeon announced the Best Lecturer Award. This year this went jointly to Prof. Dr. Robin Klupp Taylor and Prof. Dr. Nicolas Vogel. Nayeon gave a thank you speech to the professors for their passion and enthusiasm in their teaching. She also praised their active communication with the students, even during the challenging period of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. Prof. Vogel thanked his doctoral researcher Eric Görlitzer, himself a former MAP student, for his ideas and support in recording and delivering his lectures via YouTube. Prof. Klupp Taylor mentioned that the “Corona-semesters” have been like a ‘rebirth’ for him in changing his approach to teaching and thanked all the feedback he received in the previous semesters. He also thanked his HiWi student Kamilia Gabaidullina, a current MAP student, for her support in delivering his lectures online. With carnival season in full flow, Nayeon prepared some hand-decorated MAP speciality “Krapfen” and delivered them earlier before the event—not virtually this time!—to the two professors together with beautiful flower bouquets.
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Last but not least—the Best Poster Awards were announced by MAP chair Prof. Dr. Erik Bitzek. The prizes were voted on (digitally of course!) by all the lecturers and project supervisors present as well as members of the advisory board. The two first prizes were awarded to the posters “Investigation of Surfactant Adsorption Isotherm by Conductivity Measurements” by Nayeon Kang and “Correlative Nanoscale 3D X-ray Microscopy to Investigate the Collagen Fibril Structure and Orientation” by Tatiana Kormilina. The second prize went to the poster “Electrochemical Conversion of 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural to Direct-in Fuel Precursor” by Erika Therese Abella. In the short video above Prof. Klupp Taylor reviews the session and presents the three winning posters, each accompanied by the superflash talks of the students.
Unfortunately, no celebration dinner accompanied by the graduation ceremony of recently completed MAP students could take place as in previous years. The evening was concluded with everyone wishing each other for a good end of this semester and excellent results from the upcoming exams for the students.
Text: MinJoo Kim (MAP 2019), Dorothea Herget, Robin Klupp Taylor