Sparks fly: Repartee Between Brilliant Minds Shine Brighter than Christmas Candles!
On the 3rd Advent, the Matter to Life Fellow Meeting took place at Bildungscampus, Heilbronn, where forty Fellows gathered to reconnect, discuss scientific topics, and outline future directions for the Max Planck School Matter to Life.
What would you normally do on the 3rd advent? Perhaps light a candle, have some Christmas cookies and enjoy a peaceful Sunday... OR if you are a Fellow at our school, you might have headed over to the Matter to Life Fellow Meeting, enjoyed the atmosphere on the Bildungscampus, Heilbronn, and celebrated the spirit of the New Era of Matter to Life. Forty Fellows congregated at Heilbronn (already decked up for Christmas!) to (re-)connect with each other, discuss science among other things, and develop a blueprint for the upcoming decades of the Max Planck School Matter to Life. The relaxed atmosphere inspired our Fellows to reimagine the Matter to Life program for a new future.
What began as a nascent idea from Joachim Spatz, later incubated and germinated in collaboration with Heike Böhm, has flourished into an internationally recognized and thriving school and network that we witness today. Therefore, it was only apt that Joachim Spatz, who also serves as the speaker of the school, opened the meeting by giving an overview of the path traversed the last 7 years, our current framework, milestones attained, and achievements celebrated.
The Max Planck School Matter to Life has pioneered in connecting the Max Planck Society to different universities under a common research framework. In addition, it has also achieved in integrating diverse expertise in the field of Matter to Life, enabling the exploration of novel questions. A significant feather in our cap is the establishment of the joint degree for our Master program after jumping through countless bureaucratic hoops and hurdles. The joint degree ensures complete connectivity and flexibility for our students in the first phase irrespective of the study focus and site chosen. The positive evaluation on 2023 which reinforced the success of the pilot phase, and securing funding for the foreseeable future from Dieter Schwarz Stiftung (DSS) has paved the way to a bright and promising future for the school.
The Fellow meeting was not just to congratulate ourselves for a job well done, but also to ideate collectively on how we want to move forward. The ecosystem that is being forged in the Bildungscampus, Heilbronn, and our association through the DSS, definitely opens up new avenues and endless possibilities. Keeping up with the theme of the meeting ‘New Era’, faculty took part in the brainstorming session to strategize new directions within the scope of teaching and learning in the school. This coupled with the fellow presentation with specific emphasis on their teaching contributions, past and potential, definitely will help us draw a roadmap. An integral part of the future are the new Fellows who joined us earlier this Fall. The Fellow meeting also served as a platform to welcome them into the fold, get an insight into the school and its functioning, and be part of the dialogue regarding its future.
We hope that these sparks of discussions conflagrate to a vehicle of change that brings the school truly into the New Era. We are excited and looking forward to the year 2026 (and beyond), and the multitudes of adventures it will bring. We are thankful for such an engaged and motivated faculty!
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.