Francois Korbmacher

Published March 28, 2018

Since there is no guideline for a career in research, it is very important for young PhD students to find a platform for an exchange with experienced researchers.

Such an environment was created in the first IRI Tutorial given by Maria Mota, an experienced researcher with a very international vita.

In two tutorial sessions she was willing to reflect milestones of her research career from a professional but also personal point of view. In an honest an open way she created a relaxed atmosphere. Maria Mota presented and discussed her work about liver stage and blood stage parasites. In each section she described the progress in answering research questions during the last decades. She made clear, that this progress was very often related to key events and connections to other researchers.

During a dinner with her and the IRTG2290 PhD students the conditions to ask more personal questions were given. At the same time, she took the opportunity to give us advices which she thinks might be useful for our career.

In Maria Mota’s Tutorial I was reminded how important it is to have a global view on a research topic and how important connections between researchers can be.