During 6-9 January 2025, I had great time in Physikzentrum Bad Honnef during the WE-Heraeus seminar on “X-tronics with Emerging Magnetic Materials” (webpage: https://www.we-heraeus-stiftung.de/veranstaltungen/x-tronics-with-emerging-magnetic-materials-1/).
This is the seminar that I organized with my colleague Aisha Aqeel (Uni Augsburg) for long time. We submitted the seminar proposal to the WE-Heraeus foundation in February 2024. A few months later, there was evaluation by the scientifc committee, and our seminar was finally approved. For the next months, till the end of 2024, the preparation was very smooth, thanks to professional administration support from the Physikzentrum team. Only in the last few months, we spent busy time to finalize the scientific contents and schedule of the seminar.
During the seminar week, I was able to meet many of my friends and colleagues. Many of us share scientific interests, we often compete in the field, but we are inspired by each others’ research. All invited talks were excellent; inspiring and pedagogical. I also particularly enjoyed wide spectrum of different approaches, in terms of theory and experimental methods, different types of orders and excitations, and new materials which I did not know before–This was in fact the main goal of the seminar, which I and Aisha aimed for. I also enjoyed poster sessions, where I could learn lots of details and hear their honest opinions and raw ideas. We dedicated two entire sessions for posters, which turned out to be a good idea beacuse there were so many great posters.
As well as science, we spent evening in the cellar with a glass of beer, talking about our lives. Personally, I feel quite comforting to openly talk about goods and uglies in science career with other early-career scientists–about fierce competition, difficulty finding a stable position/funding, and keeping healthy work-life balance. These are more difficult problems than science itself, but hearing and talking already help. But since we are all scientisits, who are passionate about their research, we ended up talking about science at the end!
I thank everyone for making this event successful by their active participation. Although we can read papers on the Internet, watch recorded lectures on YouTube, and easily arrange a video call via Zoom, etc., this kind of event is still essential to get inspired, collaborate, and share ideas. Scientific activity is a living process, beyond the sum of research findings.
Spintronics, Orbitronics, and Physics Beyond 