Congratulations to Stefanie to be admitted to the Young Academy (Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz)! Since 2016, The Young Academy | Mainz has been the Academy’s dedicated programme for supporting emerging talent. Membership gives selected scientists, writers, and musicians the chance to build an interdisciplinary network and engage across fields. A key principle is the full and equal involvement of Young Academy members in the Academy’s activities. Active participation in meetings and events – and regular exchange with members of the established scholarly society – are therefore central to the programme. Members are also encouraged to shape the agenda themselves by organising events and launching new initiatives, especially through interdisciplinary working groups that pursue timely research questions developed independently by the members.

Our team presents our energy research at the Citizen’s Festival in Saarbrücken, in celebration of the German Unification Day. From age 5 to 65, many participated in building own small water-electrolyte-based coin cell batteries – becoming honorary battery experts 🔋Thanks for the strong effort and hour-long dedication of Stefanie Arnold, Jean Gustavo Ruthes de Andrade, Asia Sarycheva, and Anna Seltmann 🌻

Welcome to our new Postdoc, Nicolas Huth! He will work with us on battery materials and technologies.

We enjoyed our annual group retreat – due to a booking issue, reduced to one day, but no less fun! We enjoyed our group dinner, as won by popular vote, in the Vietnamese restaurant Yoko in Saarbrücken. For the scientific talks, we mixed things up: rather than all Ph.D. students and Postdocs presenting theirworks… each one was assigned a partner with a topic as different as can be within our group – and each person needed to present his/her partner’s research. 🚀

As another highlight, we had Hanna Sänger from Arenus Akademie (Tatjana Heidemann) to give a seminar on mental health. Mental health is as important as physical health – yet, it is met by stigma and taboo, as the mind reminds an opaque mystery and people rather accept what they can “see” over what they feel. Nonetheless, how we feel about ourselves and work is of highest importance and the foundation for a sustainable, productive, and healthy work life. Thanks for giving us an introductoin in this important topic (in excellent English that put myself to shame).

Thanks for our Humboldt-visitor, long-term collaborator, and true friend Michael Naguib for joining us! 💡We also got our traditional group picture done, once more, by the one and only Uwe Bellhäuser 🌼 and thank Elke Bubel for helping us so much for securing the photoshooting spot in front of the NTNM library! 📚

Looking forward to our next retreat already! And we will make sure to find a replacement appointment for some well-overdue minigolf ⛳