Back in 2010, a small group of enterprising young German marine scientists decided to help each other present their work, exchange ideas, and build new collaborations. They created YOUMARES – a conference dedicated to budding and early-career marine scientists. Now in its ninth year, the conference has gone from strength to strength. Simon Jungblut has written this guest post to tell us more.

Introducing YOUMARES

YOUMARES is an international conference series and networking platform for early-career marine scientists that takes place every year in September in alternating cities of northern Germany. It is an initiative of the German Society for Marine Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Meeresforschung e.V. - DGM), established within the working group “Studies and Education”. An essential part of the idea was to drive the organization of the conference bottom-up, i.e. the whole conference is jointly and voluntarily organized by early career scientists for YOUng MARine RESearchers.

YOUMARES promotes the research and communication activities of High School, Bachelor, Master, and PhD students. Similar to regular conferences, the participants present their research in oral or poster presentations. Additionally, workshops, plenary discussions, and social events enable the participants to exchange with each other at eye level. This exchange platform should ultimately lead to a young researcher network, and to the enhancement of individual and collective competence.

How it works

Each winter a “Call for Sessions” is published by a core organization team. Young marine researchers from all kinds of scientific fields are encouraged to host a scientific session at the upcoming conference. Applications can be submitted alone or in groups of two, and should contain the applicant’s CVs, a motivation letter and a “Call for Abstracts” for the proposed session. Sometimes two or more groups propose similar session topics. In such cases, the core organization team brings these groups together and encourages them to organize a joint session. After reviewing the proposed sessions, the “Calls for Abstracts” are published.

Hosting a YOUMARES session comes with several responsibilities, which all may benefit hosts’ future careers. The hosts review and handle the submitted presenter abstracts for their respective sessions, as well as organize and moderate the sessions themselves. All session hosts have the opportunity to write a literature review on one aspect of their field of research. These articles - and the abstracts from the corresponding sessions - will be published as a conference proceedings volume. From 2018 onwards, the YOUMARES conference proceedings will be published in the “Reports on Polar and Marine Research” series of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.

Find out more

Please visit www.youmares.org and/or subscribe to the YOUMARES newsletter and/or join the YOUMARES Facebook group for more information. If you want to become a sponsor of YOUMARES, please contact info@youmares.org to get more information.  

Submit your abstract

The next YOUMARES conference will take place from 11 to 14 September 2018 in Oldenburg, Germany. If you would like to present your research to other early-career scientists, check out the Call for Abstracts.  The deadline for submission is May 31st, 2018.

We look forward to seeing you in Germany!