We all know it: the heart of many Master level courses is the term paper, a scientific essay drawn from the students’ work during the semester. It is a way of teaching students not only the content, but also the methodology of scientific work. And to keep them occupied during the semester break, of course. But last semester one of our courses took a slightly different approach. After writing a pr ...[Read More]
Andreas Hartmann makes a point to attend Hofer Filmtage – or the Hof International Film Festival – every year to keep up a tradition he started when he was 12. As a professor, he sets down research to make the yearly pilgrimage to his German hometown to visit with his best friends and family. This year, he couldn’t completely separate from work. After getting out of a film, he got a note saying th ...[Read More]
On November 1st 2019, Louise Arnal, a PhD candidate at the University of Reading and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), had her art exhibition opening event at The Museum of English Rural Life (Reading, UK). This exhibition was part of her PhD thesis on hydrology, and was called “Gambling with floods?” For me, it was the first time I saw a PhD thesis in hydrology that ...[Read More]
Autumn had finally arrived – the weather had cooled down enough to start rock climbing outside again in southern Arizona. I was working on scaling a mountain’s cliff face tall enough to be a skyscraper with nearly 15 fellow scientists climbing routes around me. My palms were sweaty with nerves and my muscles were starting to get tired. I questioned what possessed me to climb this huge rock. ...[Read More]
