Last visit of Nikolaus? hopefully not!

It is amazing, but this morning, half a year before our group formally ends with the retirement of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, we again found almost 30 Nikoläuse in our small seminar room. Admittedly, there were some addressed to the hard-working people in the Doctoral Examination Office, Bruno’s second responsibility which currently suffers from health issues of the secretary whose work is being taken over by personnel from the Structured Doctoral Programme BioSciences as well as from the Dean’s Office. Nicolaus must have misplaced his keys for their office. But our research group also is still strong, with six post-doctoral and four doctoral researchers, one Master student, two post-graduate and two under-graduate assistants, and supported by a strong team in project management and house maintenance. Our paper score stands at nine for this year (plus one book chapter – in Portuguese), with an average impact factor of 9.6 – we can again be proud of our achievements. Some of our group also visited a few conferences where our work was well received, and where we received important impulses for our future work. This winter semester is our last, so it saw Bruno’s last big lecture for the first-year bioscience students, at which the whole group – and even some people beyond our immediate group – participated, and which left Bruno happy and satisfied. The key message this year clearly was that not only electrons but everyone is important – everyone! You are important!