Applied Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geo-/Cosmochemistry. Nearly 350 scientists, exhibitors, and guests, including over 50 international visitors, attended the conference.
The conference began on Sunday evening with an icebreaker party at the Institute of Geosciences. Plenty of barbecue food and drinks provided a pleasant setting for initial collegial exchanges. The presentations began on Monday morning, introduced by speeches from Klaus Dicke, the outgoing rector of Friedrich Schiller University; Frank Schenker, the mayor of Jena; Astrid Holzheid, chair of the DMG; and Falko Langenhorst, the conference chair.
During the conference, over 150 oral presentations and more than 100 posters were presented, divided into 17 thematic areas. Special attention was given to the plenary lectures: “The significance of cosmogenic nuclides in large lowland basins” by Hella Wittmann-Oelze (Helmholtz Center Potsdam, Germany), “Open-framework silicates at extreme conditions” by G. Diego Gatta (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), and “Biomineralization in magnetotactic bacteria and biomimetic synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles” by Mihály Pósfai (University of Pannonia Veszprém, Hungary), as well as the public evening lecture by Klaus Keil (University of Hawaii, USA) titled “The Early History of Our Solar System: The First 10 Million Years.” Other highlights of the conference program included the DMG general meeting and the presentation of the following honorary awards: The Abraham-Gottlob-Werner Silver Medal was awarded to Klaus Keil (University of Hawaii, USA). The Victor-Moritz-Goldschmidt Prize was awarded to Oliver Nebel (The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia). Furthermore, Jonas Pape (University of Bern, Switzerland) was awarded the Paul-Ramdohr Prize (see the following report).
In addition, the companies FEI Deutschland GmbH, Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, and PANalytical GmbH hosted short symposia to provide an overview of the latest analytical methods and their applications. Alongside the official conference program, a guided tour of Jena and an excursion to the Ronneburg uranium ore mining district were also offered. Furthermore, extended opening hours allowed conference participants to visit the Mineralogical Collection at the University of Jena.
The wide range of topics and the excellent organization in particular ensured a very positive response to this year’s DMG conference, from which participants were able to take home many new insights and ideas.
Steffen Schächinger (Kiel)