Brown Bag Break

The Brown Bag Breaks @FAU – networking for “hungry” postdocs (BBB) are currently not taking place. A continuation is not planned.

Under the motto of Networking for hungry postdocs, we invited you to attend a range of Brown Bag Breaks @FAU – networking for “hungry” postdocs including presentations on academic career planning and speed-networking opportunities.

Brown Bag Break @FAU: Failure in Science (December 2020):

The second Brown Bag Break @FAU in mid-December 2020 also took place virtually due to the pandemic. The guest was Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dipl. Ing. Felix B. Engel, W2 professor for experimental kidney and circulatory research, nephropathology at the University Hospital Erlangen. Prof. Engel shared his personal experiences on an exciting but also sensitive topic with the postdocs: failure in science. He not only reported openly about his own experiences with failure, but also gave the participants advice on how to deal with failure in science. The postdocs then had the opportunity to discuss the topic in more detail with Prof. Engel.

First virtual Brown Bag Break @FAU:

On 27 May 2020, a special Brown Bag Break @FAU took place, namely the first virtual Brown Bag Break @FAU. Due to the corona pandemic, the networking for “hungry” postdocs could not be carried out in the usual form of presence and was therefore moved to Zoom. Matching the digital Brown Bag Break @FAU was also the topic – “Social Media & Science Communication”. Tanja Manninger, former PhD student at the GeoZentrum Nordbayern of FAU, Prof. Dr. Stefano Zapperi, Humboldt Research Award Winner at the Chair of Materials Simulation of FAU, and Philipp Schrögel, FAU alumnus and currently working in the field of science communication at KIT, discussed their experiences with the use of Twitter for their own research work. Afterwards the postdocs had the opportunity to ask questions, which was also used extensively.

Instead of the usual personal networking, the postdocs met after the discussion round in several breakout rooms, where they had the task to write a tweet about their own research and discuss this tweet with the other postdocs in the breakout room. Of course, the postdocs also used the smaller, somewhat more private groups to exchange ideas and network. At 7 p.m. the first virtual Brown Bag Break @FAU ended.

Note: The pictures below are impressions of the Brown Bag Break @FAU, which took place in February 2020 and thus before the corona pandemic.