"Trends in water research" - Research Course and international Symposium at DESY

Symposium

During a session of the International DESY Symposium on Water Research 2018.

Symposium

Participants of the international DESY Symposium on Water Research 2018.

Poster

More than 140 participants attended the 17th DESY Research Course and the international DESY Symposium on water research this week. The symposium took place for the first time. Water is unambiguously the most important liquid on Earth and is therefore in the focus of geoscience, physics, chemistry and biology. It shows a remarkable variety of anomalies of many physical behaviors essential for our daily life and the development of life in general. Examples for these features are the density anomalies and the high surface tension of liquid water, which are caused by a quite complex hydrogen bond network. Surprisingly not all details of this liquid are known. Therefore, a common effort is needed to gain a comprehensive insight of the complex interaction of water molecules.

The DESY Symposium on Water Research focused on possibilities and strategies to bring scientists from different disciplines in this field together, in order to establish a new Center for Water Science (CWS) at DESY. Future interdisciplinary research on water at the CWS, and measurements at DESY’s light sources PETRA III, FLASH and the European XFEL, could deepen the insights in this unique substance.

As a platform for stimulating discussions on the latest developments in the scientific fields, the Research Course series started at DESY in 2001. The annual courses address mainly master and PhD students, young research fellows and interested scientists. 40 posters on “Trends in water research” were presented at this year’s research course and four posters were awarded a poster prize.

Contact for further information: Gerhard Grübel and Felix Lehmkühler (DESY)