Recap: First Geo.X PhD Day 2025
23rd May 2025 at DLR
On May 23, 2025, we organized the first Geo.X PhD Day. All PhD students in our network were invited, without a specific umbrella topic. We teamed up with the EPEC (Europlanet Early Career network) and jointly organized the event at the German Aerospace Center DLR in Berlin-Adlershof.
Prof. Heinz-Wilhelm Hübers began by welcoming all participants, introducing the host Institute of Space Research at DLR and acknowledging the role of Geo.X for the geosciences in Berlin and Potsdam. From there we went straight into our Geo.X Science Slam. Six doctoral students from within our network volunteered to test their skills in this kind of contest. In contrast to a regular science conference, a science slam aims to bring your own research project closer to a broader, interested audience. You have a lot of creative freedom to convince the audience of your project in an interactive and fun way. After each slam, the audience is asked to award points so that a winner is chosen at the end. Geo.X had enabled these 6 people to take part in a special preparatory seminar beforehand. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Julia from Science Slam, who provided our candidates with a fantastic training.
Our Science Slam
Sabatino ‘Saba’ Santangelo (DLR)
Our first slammer gave an exciting insight into theories about the formation of the Moon. Almost like a criminal investigation, different theories were compared and even though we already know a lot, thanks to Saba we realized that there is still a lot of research to be done on the Moon!
Isik Su Yazici (DLR)
Then we turned our backs on the Moon and flew to Mars. Isik showed us that we can also learn a lot about the geology and geomorphology of Mars on Earth and was even able to make visual comparisons with traditional pottery.
Carianna Herrera (DLR)
From Mars we then moved on to the next planet, Venus. Carianna has worked through the research history of the planet Venus for us in an extremely humorous way. Thanks in part to the multitude of funny memes, we now know that we have a much more pleasant time on Earth than on Venus
Nina Nesterova (AWI)
Now it was time to turn to earthly phenomena and Nina, in the form of a polar bear, made it clear to us how we are all affected by the thawing of the permafrost.
Isabel Wapenhans (UP)
The extent to which climate fluctuations and erosion rates in the high mountains are connected and why it is worthwhile to understand both was impressively illustrated by Isabel. It was particularly impressive because the audience was allowed to imitate the oscillating climate curves.
Lingxiao Gong (UP)
Lingxiao took over the last science slam with another extremely funny presentation, in which Lingxiao made connections between the formation of the Tian Shan Mountains and various cooking techniques.
And the winners are...
Now it was up to us to count the points awarded by the audience and choose a winner. Curiously, there was a tie and Carianna Herrera and Nina Nesterova shared first place with 96 out of 100 points each.
Congratulations to you both!
Our other candidates were only just behind, which shows how well the slams were received by the audience. You all did a fantastic job!
All other participants had the opportunity to present posters in the afternoon session. This once again demonstrated the broad scientific spectrum that is represented within Geo.X. The topics covered included planetary remote sensing, geodesy, nuclear repositories, groundwater modeling and much more.
Looking back, we can say that we had a great first Geo.X PhD day. The feedback from our participants was consistently very positive, which encourages us to possibly install a PhD Day as a regular event. By providing low-threshold access to events like these, we create synergy effects that only further stimulate the cooperation in the network.
We would like to thank everyone involved in the organization, especially Nimisha Verma (DLR) and the EPEC group!
Jacob Hardt for Geo.X
