At the end of August it was time. Now it would become clear whether the first interim goal of the PASCAL project would be achieved. This goal was to make the project and the scientific expertise behind it known to the African scientific community. To tell people what Jülich research, and that of its partners, stands for and what we are planning when, how, where and, above all, WHY.
Of course, this is especially true if you receive a prize for international research marketing from the General Secretary of the German Research Foundation (DFG)!
I have just returned from Oman, where I accompanied Geoverbund ABC/J’s student’s excursion. Actually, it was now planned to put the registration form for PASCAL online. However, I could not do everything necessary for it before my departure. So it’s always good to have an official deadline that you share with colleagues and an unofficial “very-very-last-it-has-definitely-to-be-done-by-this-date” one.
My daily work for Geoverbund ABC/J, whose coordination office I manage, includes public relations. Qualification of young academics is also very important to the geoscientific network of RWTH Aachen University, the University of Cologne, the University of Bonn, and Forschungszentrum Jülich. That’s why I organize several trainings per year, including the Fall School of the HPSC TerrSys, Geoverbund ABC/J’s Competence Center for High-Performance Scientific Computing founded in 2011.