The CINSaT Autumn Colloquium is once again a great success and attracts numerous professors, research assistants and students to the lecture hall.

On Wednesday, October 24, 2018, the annual CINSaT Autumn Colloquium took place for the first time in the renovated lecture hall 282 at the University of Kassel's Heinrich-Plett-Strasse campus. Once again, numerous professors, doctoral candidates, as well as bachelor and master students from various disciplines were eagerly awaiting the presentations of the guest speakers. The Autumn Colloquium, which is open to all interested parties, not only offers the opportunity to listen to interesting lectures on current nanotechnological research topics, but also to find out about the current research content of the CINSaT itself in the Poster Session.

The event was opened on behalf of CINSaT spokesman Prof. Dr. Johann Peter Reithmaier by board member Prof. Dr. Witzigmann, who warmly welcomed the audience.

Prof. Dr. Johann Plank from the Technical University of Munich started the series of lectures with a presentation entitled "Polycarboxylate (PCE) Superplasticizers and Their Impact on the Micro and Nano Structure of Concrete", in which he explained very clearly the effects of various additives based on polycarboxylates and their impact on the micro- and nanostructure of the individual phases in concrete, as well as the associated changes e.g. in the mechanical properties. Afterwards, Prof. Dr. Philip Russel from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen captivated the audience with his exciting lecture "Ultimate light-matter control in glass-fibre crystals". The presentation was accompanied by videos in a very descriptive way.

After a half-hour coffee break, which was not only used to get to know each other, but also for a first review of the posters, the second part of the lecture series followed, where Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jussi Toppari of the Nanoscience Center of the partner university in Jyväskylä (Finland) presented his lecture with the title "Chemistry of Vacuum: Manipulating Chemistry with Vacuum Light Field".

The Poster Session following the lectures set a new record with 52 posters. The foyer in front of lecture hall 282 not only offered sufficient space for the numerous poster contributions, but also for extensive scientific discussions and the exchange of information on current research topics within CINSaT. Once again, the catering provided by the Student Union of the University of Kassel took care of the physical well-being during the event. The interdisciplinary cooperation within the CINSaT became clear, for example, in the form of poster contributions from several research groups or the content-related posters from the research consortium PhosMOrg (Phosphoregulation of Biomolecules: from Mechanisms to Organisms).

The event concluded with the presentation of the poster prizes, which were awarded by this year's jury - consisting of CINSaT members Prof. Dr. Jörg H. Kleinschmidt, Prof. Dr. Markus Maniak, Prof. Dr. Thomas Niendorf and Dr. Arne Senftleben - for the three best poster contributions (1st prize tablet, 2nd prize retro console, 3rd prize external hard drive). The jury emphasized the high scientific quality of the posters.

Rico Huhnstock won this year's 1st prize with the poster "Exploring the static and dynamical behaviour of spherical exchange-biased Janus particels as a new tool for microfluidic biointeraction screening". Second place this year went to Uh-Myong Ha & Kristijan Krekic with their poster "Highly fluorescent triangle shaped PMMA nanoparticles". The 3rd place was awarded to Sabine Pautz with her poster "Biochemical Characterization of Microtubule-Associated Serine/Threonin Kinases".

The CINSaT Fall Colloquium was again a great success due to the high number of participants, both in the audience and the poster contributions, and the thematically balanced presentations of the guest speakers.