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Published 28 June 2012 by Beatrice Lugger

6 Video Diarists – 6 Countries

6 out of 592 young researchers show us, where they come from. In words and pictures. On Monday the first of this year’s Lindau Video Diarists have uploaded their videos – about themselves, their hopes and their research topics. Now all of them have done so and you may travel with us via these videos from Germany to researchers from India, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa and the USA. While the young researchers pack their baggs in order to make their way to Germany, where the 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting begins on Sunday.

Harsha ReddyHarshavardhan Reddy Pinninty from India wants to establish friendships to other scientists and thinks about what science and research could achieve in developing countries.  He currently works at the University of Hyderabad in India, by which he was nominated supported by supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) and the Department of Science and Technology in India. His nominator Narayana Rao is sure that Harsha will bring back great memories and share it with all others at their institute.
 


Albert JumaAlberto O. Juma from Kenya thinks meeting Laureates will both be rewarding and challenging. What interests him especially are the differences between doing science and research in a developing, and in a developed country.
You might also be interested in why Alberto Jumas nominator Thomas Dittrich of the department Heterogeneous Materials Systems at Helmholtz Centre in Berlin thinks the Lindau Nobel meeting is important for the HZB and for young researchers.



Ghada Bassioni
Ghada Bassioni from Egypt. She wants to understand and explain what it is like to be a woman in a man’s (physics) world.
In Cairo this April, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and the Egyptian government agreed to enable the regular participation of young Egyptian scientists in the meetings from 2013 on. The signing of a corresponding memorandum of understanding had been enabled and arranged by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which will fill in this year and fund the participation of two Egyptians in the 62nd Lindau Meeting. One of them is Ghada Bassioni, assistant professor at the faculty of engineering at Cairo’s Ain Shams University (ASU). She obtained her Ph.D. in Germany at the Technische Universität München (TUM) in organometallic chemistry, and is responsible of coordinating collaborations between TUM and ASU. Bassioni’s research is based on interdisciplinary approaches and encompasses a wide array of fields like green construction materials, production or oilfield chemistry, and homogeneous catalysis. “I strongly believe in the importance of education and research for a society to develop and prosper, especially with regard to the new era in Egypt. My country has a great potential of young scientists and researchers who need helping hands to guide them in their careers,” Bassioni points out. Her nominator at the Ain Shams Univesity, Sherif Hammad, is happy with her about the opportunity to attend the Meeting.



Heather GrayHeather Gray from South Africa actually works at CERN. She wants to get a feeling for exciting new ideas at Lindau. She describes her research interest: „I like to understand how and why things work. This is the source of my curiosity which motivates me to solve various problems from commissioning a complex detector such as ATLAS, to understanding track reconstruction and the detector description, through measuring the SM W+b-jet cross-section to searching for the Higgs boson.“ Her nominator at CERN, Daniel Froidevaux, had heard of others before, that the Lindau Meeting is ‚“very exciting and a sort of thrilling experience.“



Casey Schwarz
Casey Schwarz from the USA works at the University of Central Florida. She is specially interested in what she might learn „Lindau about the responsibilities of scientists in society“. And she describes her research motivation: „I would like to be involved in exciting and creative research which will have a positive impact on our world. I feel like the more I research and work I do either independently or in collaboration will make me a better overall thinker and problem solver. I enjoy evaluating and modifying novel devices in order to understand and improve performance. By better understanding important aspects of the materials we use we can improve these devices and encourage future applications.“ Her nominator Elena Flitsiyan of the Department of Physics explains why the interaction between generations of scientists at the Lindau Nobel meeting is important for the University of Central Florida.


Pascal NeibeckerPascal Neibecker from Germany is now in the second term of the master’s programme at the Technical University of Munich. This why the Elite Network of Bavaria helped him to join the Lindau meeting. Neibecker therefore did an interview with coordinator of the Elite-Network Bayern Beate Lindner. Here he told me about his personal hero, Dan Shechtman.

Beatrice Lugger

Beatrice Lugger is a science journalist and science social media specialist with a background as a chemist. She is Scientific Director of the National Institute for Science Communication, NaWik – nawik.de. @BLugger is her twitter handle, Quantensprung her own blog.