Thoughts on the Lindau Nobel Laureate meetings

UCF Physics student Casey Schwarz recently attended the prestigious Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings in Lindau on Lake Constance, in the very south of Bavaria, Germany.

More than 25 Nobel Laureates and 580 young researchers from all over the world met at Lindau to exchange ideas, discuss projects and build international networks.

Schwarz was kind enough to write a guest blog post for us sharing her thoughts on the experience. It is below.

“So, I’m back from Lindau now and would like to share a little about my experience there. First of all, Lindau is incredibly beautiful. You can walk around the whole island in a few hours. They have a busy marketplace, art exhibits and tons of interesting places to go. It is a Bavarian town and the food is great everywhere. The actual meeting hall was big and offered different areas to get together and talk to different laureates. Even with over 550 students barraging the laureates with questions they always seemed eager to answer and we all got a chance to personally speak with them. I got to talk with Albert Fert, Mario Molina and George Smoot as well as have lunch with Dudley Herschbach and Harold zur Hausen. Some were more eccentric than others but all were interesting and very motivating. It was great to see then so interested in the promotion of the next generation of scientists. I have also made so many friends from all over while I was there. Working in physics you don’t normally get to go out at night with big group of friends and talk about research. We had dinners set up with different international groups, this helped us to better get to know the other delegations and the research that their students did. It was a great experience; everyone was so enthusiastic about their research and their department as was I. I was also really glad that I could do the video diary project. This enabled me to talk more with the laureates and really reflected my time there. I also enjoyed working with the other students who were a part of the video diary project. We were able to see what research was like in other countries with their unique prospective and experiences. Overall, I would really recommend any young scientist to apply to this meeting. Its not often that you get to see how important the part you play is in the bigger picture and how much of a community scientist really have all around the world.”

Read our full story and the Lindau Nobel Laureate meetings and see Schwarz’s photos from the trip here.