Last but not last Christmas party – there is always a next…

This being the last Christmas season in which Bruno Moerschbacher is full professor (“ordentlicher Professor” in German – Can you believe it? Have you ever seen his office?), this year has seen our last full Christmas party. As always, we had a superb buffet and we had Glühwein, we had a Pub-Quiz organised by Max Linhorst and a Secret Santa Wichteln organized by Feli Pöhlchen and Lea Theile. And as a special, Stefan Cord-Landwehr took us back in time through the past twenty years, presenting a carefully crafted selection of pictures in which we recognized our younger selves, and many friends and colleagues from former times. It became late. If we look back at this year, we can be satisfied again, more than satisfied. Kathrin Lindenbuß und Leonie Brussel successfully submitted their Bachelor theses, Felizia Pöhlchen her Master thesis, Mouna Student and Margareta Hellmann their doctoral theses. We finished the German-Norwegian LignoLIPP project on Mucoromycota chitosans, while Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr’s and Katharina Eickelpasch’s projects in the framework of the DFG Codeχ Priority Programme to decipher the chito-code, and Anika Wargenau’s European EIP-Agri project AbDü on insect chitosans continue. Also, our two start-up projects – Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar’s and Dr. Carolin Richter’s project greEnCAP as well as Dr. Anne Vortkamp’s and Dr. Philipp Lemke’s project AgriBluBio – continue, to bring our second and third generation chitosans to the agricultural markets. The start-up project ChitoNext of our alumnus Dr. Max Linhorst, which he pursues with the University of Wuppertal, brought him back to our lab. And Margareta started her DFG funded research project on Cryptococcus, together with our alumnus Dr. Christian Gorzelanny from Hamburg. Hopefully, these projects will secure the continuation of our work beyond Bruno’s retirement – and another Christmas party next year.