Helmholtz Alliance Planetary Evolution and Life Newsletter #2
The Helmholtz Alliance ‚Planetary Evolution and Life’ was launched almost two years ago (April 2008). This second newsletter introduces and summarizes previous, ongoing and planned activities. The Newsletter will be sent to our distribution lists but will also be uploaded to the web page for future reference.
A major milestone for late this year or early next year will be the mid-term review. We will make the preparation for this a discussion for our next Alliance Week (see below). You are kindly asked to let us have your data for our publication list (also below)
Meetings 2009
Meetings 2010
Topic Responsible Workshop:
During this workshop the Topic Responsibles (Topic Leaders) will discuss the status of the alliance. It will focus on providing a status update for each topic and will discuss whether or not the alliance is in line with the original proposal and if and where the research plan needs to be updated. The workshop will seek to identify means for increasing and improving on the interaction between the topics. The outcome of the meeting will be distributed among the members of the alliance.
3rd Alliance Week:
The third Alliance Week once again will take place at the DLR in Berlin. The meeting will be subdivided in sessions with each session taking about three hours and covering one of the Alliance topics. We plan to have each topic introduced by the respective Topic Responsible followed by presentations given by individual researchers (doc students, post-docs, researchers). There will be ample time for discussion.
On Wednesday afternoon (March 10th) there will be time for splinter meetings. Furthermore, we will have a public lecture given by Prof. Dirk Schulze-Makuch on Thursday evening (March 11th) at the Urania, Berlin. Monday evening (March 9th) we will have a social event.
Early Earth Day:
Immediately following the 3rd Alliance Week on Friday (March 12th) we will have an Early Earth day together with the Archean Environment network (an ESF network coordinated by Nick Arndt). The requested speakers are Michael Bau, Tanja Zegers and Nick Arndt. We are still negotiating a speaker for early atmosphere evolution.
Graduate Student Week:
In the week following the Pentecost holidays (25.-28. 5.) we are planning to have a “Graduate Student Week”. This week will give graduate students and young researchers of the Alliance a forum to discuss their research work and interact. Participation will be restricted to graduate students and post-docs (young researchers). T. Spohn will give an introduction and the topic responsible will be available for questions if requested. The “Graduate Student Week” will be organized by Barbara Stracke and a team of students. Stay tuned for further announcements.
Seminar
Since the winter semester 2008/2009 we are having a regular seminar in Berlin, where mostly the Graduate Students and Post-Docs present their work. Every participating institution of the alliance in Berlin will host the seminar once. In the winter semester 2008/2009 the seminar took place at the DLR Berlin, in the summer semester 2009 at the FU Berlin, in the current winter semester 2009/2010 at the Museum für Naturkunde, and in the upcoming summer semester 2010 it will take place at the TU Berlin. The program can be found on our website.
In the winter semester 2010/2011 we will return to have the seminar at the DLR Berlin. We are planning to start a webcast at this occasion to enable members of the alliance to easily participate. We are motivated to do so since even in Berlin the distances between the participating institutions is a nuisance.
Lectures Series
In the summer semester 2009 we have started a lecture series ‘Planeten und Leben im Überblick’ (Overview on planets and life) given by leading researchers (mostly from Berlin for convenience) in the alliance at the TU Berlin. The series is being continued through the winter semester 2009/2010. The presentations are made available on our team website. We started to produce versions of the presentations with additional audio recordings. These will be on the team website for download as they become available.
Publications
We need to collect all entries for the publication list of the Alliance which we will keep on our protected team site. Please send electronic reprints of published papers (if possible) to Barbara Stracke (barbara.stracke@dlr.de) at least send the publication list entry. At this occasion be reminded of the acknowledgement sentence we kindly ask you include, which could be found on our team site (Shared Documents).
Website
http://www.dlr.de/hgf_alliance_pel_en (english)
www.dlr.de/hgf_alliance_pel (german)