Authors

Janet Hering
Director
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Ole Seehausen

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Florian Altermatt

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Abishek Sankara Narayan
(Dr. Sc. ETH) Project Manager / PostDoc
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Fabian Balk
PhD Student
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Christoph Lüthi
Dr. Eng. Infrastructure Planning
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Joao Paulo Leitao
Senior scientist (Group Leader)
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Rosetta Blackman

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Voices of Eawag Researchers

Voices of Eawag researchers is the blog platform for Eawag researchers, on which informal reports on research are published, current developments in science are commented and general research information is made public. Voices of Eawag researchers is a platform by researchers for researchers and people who are interested in science.

Voices of Eawag researchers is the voice of researchers. The articles reflect the opinions, assessments and positions of the authors and not of the institution Eawag.

Turning SETAC's Young Environmental Scientists Meeting virtual

End of February, we, the Student Advisory Council of SETAC Europe, successfully held the biannual (European) Young Environmental Scientists (YES) Meeting online with participants from all over the world. The event comprised all features of an equivalent physical meeting, including space for networking and socializing.

Turning virtual

"What are the challenges of turning a physical conference into an online event?" - This was the main question that we, the Student Advisory Council of SETAC Europe, faced when the 10th Young Environmental Scientists Meeting had to turn to the virtual space. Although the meeting was initially planned to take place in Aachen, Germany, we decided to take on the challenge of hosting the first virtual YES meeting instead of cancelling - a decision so many others had to face.
 

The Challenges

The most challenging hurdle was to ensure a proper representation of the scientific conference format, where every participant would be able to access platform presentations and posters independent from the European time-based conference programme.
Moreover, the conference's virtual format implied a drastically different environment for any networking or social event we planned. To this point, no "best practices" were available except for comparably few other virtual conferences that rapidly switched from in-person to virtual format in 2020. Nevertheless, we were able to find and create entertaining online activities that facilitated social interactions in the virtual space.
Lastly, due to the current global health crisis, our budget to conduct the conference was smaller than usual. This sparked our initiative to apply for external funding at our affiliated research institutions.

 

The fruits of our work

After countless hours of emailing and building the online platform, we launched the event on the 22nd of February for 103 participants who joined from their home bases reaching from as far as Australia, the US or South Africa (and also including 9 participants from Eawag). The prerecorded platform presentations and uploaded posters were accessible to the participants at any time, in case they couldn't join the eight live sessions with scheduled presentations and discussions. 
Locations on world map from where the YES 2021 participants joined the conference.
Four Keynote speakers from different sectors of environmental sciences gave valuable insights into the importance of networking, open access publishing, working in industry as a scientist and the solutions to current global environmental crises.
Socializing and networking opportunities included ice-breaking online games, two poster socials, several yoga classes, a movie night, a trivia game evening, a virtual conference dinner and many other smaller events. Last but not least, the participants had a chance to expand their skillset in eleven workshops and training courses, including mental health, scholarship application, mass spectrometry and LCA applications, CV tuning, visual communication and data storage and management.
All this could not have happened without our sponsors that financially supported our efforts: GRADE Sustain of the Goethe University, Swiss Federal Insitute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Agilent, Syngenta, ToxRat, fera, Environmental Science & Technology, Talking Bridge and SETAC Europe.
Collection of impressions from the YES 2021

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Author

Fabian Balk
PhD Student
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2 Comments

  • Kristin Schirmer

    at 23.03.2021
    Dear Fabian: Thank you for sharing this experience, which I am sure will be valuable to others. And as well a big thanks to you and your team for making this meeting possible. Well done!
    Reply

    • Andreas Schaeffer

      at 27.03.2021
      Thank you really very much for organizing such meeting, a meeting for youngsters only!
      Andreas Erickson, Mafalda Castro, Lena Benner, Kristina Bitter, Markus Schmitz, Marian Abboud, Ana Ramos, Samuel Moeris, Fabian Balk - you did a splendid and important job!
      Reply