December 6, 2023: Nikolaus visited us!

He seems happy again this year. Nikolaus brought chocolate copies of himself for everyone. This year, with just five papers (so far! – more is to come...), including one that is still under embargo, we achieved an average impact factor of 8.2, essentially the same as last year (8.1) with then six papers. We are doing this exercise every year, not because we believe in impact factors, but because we are proud of what we have achieved. We had thought that the size of our group would finally start to decline, but this is still not the case. While we had less Master students than last year's record number, and less doctoral researchers finished their projects, we seem to attract back post-doctoral alumnae and alumni – what a wonderful development! The mix of experienced researchers with fresh minds from our students is invigorating. This is made possible by the granting of several projects in the past months, which will allow us to pursue our ambitions with even greater emphasis in the coming two years. And our research got an extra boost this year from the first post-pandemic chitin and chitosan conference in wonderful Iceland where we were strongly represented, with our Master student Felizia Pöhlchen, our doctoral researcher Margareta Hellmann, our post-doctoral researcher Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher. We presented and discussed our progress, and we learned about that of our colleagues from around the world. How we had missed this! Nikolaus says "thank you" to all members of the group, not only for excellent research, but even more importantly: for the excellent group spirit. Couldn't be better!