On 4 April, young scientists met on the Wechloy campus of the University of Oldenburg for the ICBM's 6th Postgraduate Symposium. A total of 45 doctoral students exchanged views on current scientific topics at the ICBM and beyond in an independently developed programme across working groups.

The successful management of a successful doctoral period as well as the further career path were also dealt with in five breakout sessions. The topics of the sessions held in English were "Balance your Mental Health during the PhD", "Application for a PostDoc position", "Surprising power of peer-coaching: collective solutions for your problem", "How to peer-review for scientific journals" and "PhD Roadmap for 1st-year PhDs".

The PhD students were already able to gain experience in conference organisation and moderation of scientific events through the programme design. As a guest speaker, Ulrike Prange, science communicator at the Bremen Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences MARUM, explained to the young scientists in a keynote speech how to communicate research results to the public in a up-to-date way.

Another keynote speaker was the renowned British ecologist Prof. Dr. Stuart Pimm, current holder of the Chair of Conservation Ecology at DUKE University (North Carolina, USA). In his lecture, the participants of the symposium learned about research results around the current species extinction and considerations and trends on how to counteract it.

21 of the PhD students presented their current research work in a poster session. Along the way, there was also opportunity to exchange ideas on research topics and to network. After the long pandemic period, the symposium was a welcome opportunity for the young scientists to establish and deepen contacts. In particular, doctoral students who had to start their work during this socially restrictive phase would have liked such an event, as initial feedback indicated.

Lively exchanges around science also took place during lunch, which was gratefully supported by the financial contribution of the Universitätsgesellschaft Oldenburg (UGO).