By summerstudent Gia Van Tran > Hop on the RE train at 7h12. I take out my pen and notebook to write down what I did yesterday and stupid mistakes to avoid. Then, I note down my daily tasks and some papers that would be nice to read when I was not in experiment time. That should take me at most 5 minutes to finish, so I still have around 50 minutes of commuting time.Read More →
By summerstudent Christina Papaefthymiou> When I applied for the HZB Summer Student Program in December 2023, I had no idea what was to come. Knowing that finding accommodation in Berlin is not an easy task, I felt very lucky to secure an apartment four months before my arrival. Deep inside, I knew that once I stepped foot in Berlin, everything would fall into place and my fears would go away. And so it happened. The only unexpected condition when I arrived was the warm weather….Read More →
By summerstudent Muhammad Kashif Raza> Nothing worthwhile is accomplished easily, and this summer program at HZB served as a reminder of that. From visa issues as a non-European student to finding accommodation in bustling capital city Berlin, I faced numerous challenges. Literally, it took about four months getting visa and finding the dormitory. But real test started when I reached my apartment in Berlin and found no Pakistani food around…Read More →
Every year, a small team at HZB organises the International Summer Students Programme. This summer, 13 young people came from Kenya, Colombia, Serbia and other countries. At the final conference, all students presented their projects with flash talks and posters. The best poster and the most intriguing blog post were elected – a difficult process, since the quality was really very good.Read More →
After two years of interruption due to the Corona pandemic, HZB finally hosted summer students again this summer. They came from Pakistan, Colombia, Spain, USA, and Korea. A look behind the scenes of the International Summer Student Programme – ISSP.Read More →
by DAAD-summerstudent Laura Berneaga What happens when you stop planning and start letting life flow by itself instead? Many would assume everything would crumble or you would somehow fall behind, but for me the complete opposite was true. This path led me to Germany, something I had been dreaming of doing since the last time I stepped foot in this country. Five years ago, I did a research exchange in Stuttgart and ever since then, all my plans revolved around finding a way to come back here. I enrolled in German language courses, I looked for internship opportunities in the area, I was inquiring aboutRead More →
by summerstudent Oscar Moreno As a master’s student in chemistry, experiments are the basis of my research. The excitement of running an experiment for the first time and the challenge of trying to explain the results keeps me motivated. Nonetheless, in order to pursue things further, my investigation forced me to work during weekends and many times I found myself preparing reports in my room at midnight. I was not aware my acacemic life had come out of the laboratory and was encroaching on other aspects of my life until one of my advisors stopped me. After seeing me working on Saturdays without pausing, heRead More →
by summerstudent Geunwoo Kim Before coming to Berlin, I had never spoken English. In South-Korea, it is not easy to have a chance to speak English in general except for special cases. I was also a student who had never had a chance to speak English. When I applied for the HZB Summer Student Program in February 2022, I was worried about ‘Can I communicate well?’ and ‘Can I do my research well?’ When I received an email from HZB that I was selected for the summer student program, I was happy and worried. The problem was that I had never spoken English. After finishingRead More →
by summerstudent Jorge Torre Ordás If you are reading this, there is around a 40 % chance that you have lived most of your life in a rural area. In my case, this is true, and you must know that, for that reason, I had never traveled neither by plane, train, or tram until the day I arrived in Berlin, in which I did it all at once. Berlin has an astonishing public transport infrastructure, which could not amaze me more when I came to my first day of the HZB Summer Student Programme (2022). The whole transport network is the result of years ofRead More →
by summerstudent Attia Arooj No great things come easily in your life, so as this summer program at HZB. From visa problems as a non european student to accommodation in a crowded city like Berlin, I faced it all. But the real challenge started when I got to see my work place. It was a “Physics” Lab or more technically called Magnetic Resonance Lab equipped with NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) and EPR (Electron Paramagnetic Resonance) spectrometers. Being a chemist, working in a physics lab was totally new to me. Since college I had always a fear towards this subject which made me run away fromRead More →