She has an open ear for doctoral students and brings people together at the STED microscope: a visit to Dr Beate Grünberg in the Research Training Group "Molecular Foundations of Sensory Biology".
I coordinate a research training group in the natural sciences, which currently has 22 doctoral students from biology, chemistry and physics as members. The research training group gives them the opportunity to continue their education alongside their research work. For the doctoral students to be successful, they should be satisfied and happy. Ensuring this is one of my core tasks. Very different questions arise: What is my status at the university: PhD student or researcher? Or: What is a supervision agreement? PhD students also come to me when they have doubts about themselves because of "negative results". I then try to convey that the scientific discovery process is always open-ended. I really enjoy the variety of my tasks and the opportunity to support and accompany doctoral students on their journey. That's why I moved from the Research Centre Neurosensory Science to the Kolleg in October 2013.
What I took with me from the research centre was the task of supporting the researchers at the STED microscope. At the time, I helped write the DFG proposal for the "gated" STED microscope and this microscope has been in Oldenburg since summer 2012. The inventor Stefan Hell from Göttingen, together with Eric Betzig and William Moerner, was awarded the Nobel Prize for the STED technology. The "gated" STED microscope makes the tiniest details visible; it has a resolution of less than 50 nanometres. By comparison, a human hair is around 70,000 nanometres thick. The high resolution of the microscope can show the inner structure of the cells that form the myelin layer in the central nervous system - a kind of insulation between the individual nerve fibres - in greater detail. The STED is currently being used particularly intensively for research on the retina. Thanks to the collaboration within the research group, the biologists working at the STED benefit from the expert knowledge of the physicists.
I am very close to the research and the people. That's important to me. I'm a chemist by training and I did my doctorate in molecular biology in Berlin. I have been at the University of Oldenburg since 2011. I enjoy the flat hierarchies here and the freedom to set my own work priorities.
Written down by: Birgit Bruns