Every year the German Chemical Society Young Chemists’ also known as JungChemikerForum (JCF) organizes a spring symposium. This year, the JCF celebrated the 20th anniversary of the spring symposium in south Germany at the heart of Lake Constance with a serene view of the Swiss Alps, bordering Switzerland attracting more than 300 participants from different Universities across Europe and Asia. An exciting aspect of this conference is that this is an international conference for the students organized by the students. The theme of the conference “Bridging the gap” befitted the scientific, international and cultural diversity showcased from the posters and oral talks. At the beginning of the conference, Willis Muganda an IYCN representative and board member of JCF gave a short presentation to all regional leaders’ meeting about the objectives, vision and future prospects of IYCN. Most of the leaders present expressed interest in actively engaging in future IYCN activities. IYCN was actively represented with a poster.
The organizers put tremendous effort in outsourcing for keynote speakers from different scientific research backgrounds. One of the outstanding moments was how the young researchers actively engaged and interacted with these speakers. It is always amazing to see how people make new friendship and dine together. One delegate said, “I have never ever made useful contacts in my life within a short time like this. I definitely want to attend the next spring symposium”. One of the collaborating partners of IYCN, European Young Chemists’ Network (EYCN) in collaboration with Wiley and EVONIK sponsored the best poster an oral talks awards.
Such a conference would not have been successful without the support of the German Chemical Society, University of Konstanz and other industry partners. The next spring symposium will be held at the University of Bremen in Bremen city from March 20th-23rd, 2019.
