Under the title “The Dynamic Earth—From Alfred Wegener to the Present and into the Future,” the latest research findings from all fields of the geosciences were presented.

The conference began on Sunday evening with an icebreaker party at the Henry Ford Building at the Free University of Berlin. On Monday, GeoBerlin 2015 officially kicked off with the first lectures, poster presentations, and opening remarks by Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka (Federal Minister of Education and Research).

During the conference, current research topics were presented in nearly 400 talks and over 250 posters. Public lectures on Sunday and Wednesday also focused on the life and work of Alfred Wegener. Other highlights of the conference program included the general meetings of the DMG and the DGGV, at which the founding of the new umbrella organization for the geosciences (DVGeo) was publicly announced. In addition, honorary membership in the DMG was conferred upon Hans Seck, Jochen Hoefs, Friedrich Seifert, and Martin Okrusch (a detailed tribute to the honorees will appear in Gmit 63). As part of the conference’s closing ceremony on Wednesday afternoon, the Student Poster Award—originated by an initiative of the Geo Student Council at the FU—was presented for the first time. The 2015 Paul Ramdohr Award winners were also announced. Aurelia Zirner (Bonn) and Maria Stuff (Potsdam) received the award for their outstanding presentations at the conference.

In addition, visitors could visit the booths of Thermo Fisher Scientific, JEOL, Renishaw, PANalytical, HORIBA, and Bruker.

This diversity of topics and excellent organization ensured a very positive response to the joint DMG-DGGV conference “GeoBerlin 2015,” from which participants were able to take home many new insights and ideas.

Gerald Buck (Tübingen)