10 months of VOLT: a review of 2023
VOLT has started in March 2023 and what a year it has been!
The official opening ceremony was in June, with a great turnout, VIP guest speakers and a musical moment, followed by a reception. In addition, while waiting for June, we started March with an internal celebration to mark the occasion, and bring together all the Center members from the different locations (North Campus and Helsingør Campus) and sections (Terrestrial Ecology, Marine Biology and Microbiology).
New members, visitors and collaborators
Very early on, VOLT has started hiring people for key roles such as the center administrator (Ana Verissimo) and lab manager (Kajsa Roslund). We have also had 4 new PhD students starting and some MSc students joining, as well as various long term visiting students.
From the the summer we had many collaborators visiting VOLT. To name just a few, Rosa Boone from the Radboud Institute for Biological and Environmental Sciences, who works on soil volatiles, and then Tana Wuyun from the Estonian University of Life Sciences and Lu Zhang from Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University came for 2 months with many lichen samples to run on PTR-TOF as a new angle to analyze VOCs.
Internal scientific activities
To promote knowledge transfer, discussion and collaboration, VOLT holds several meetings fortnightly: journal club (where one person proposes and presents a paper and then leads a discussion), VOLT-all meetings (these started with talks from the Center PIs, then some post-docs and PhD students and now going forward in the new year, we will welcome our collaborators to both join the meetings, as well as give talks and participate in discussions), and VOC lunchtime meetings (informal meetings over lunch to present and discuss ongoing work, give and receive feedback, and troubleshoot).
Outreach and communications
Volatile News is the internal monthly VOLT newsletter that keeps Center members connected and informed, introduces new members, celebrates achievements and reduces the amount of e-mails.
In addition to internal communications, it is also important to keep our collaborators (existing and potential new ones) and general public informed and excited about our research and findings. So, you can follow and engage with VOLT on our website, as well as the various Social Media platforms: Twitter/X, BlueSky, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
There have been some Twitter takeovers whenever some members were out doing field work, attending events or doing exciting experiments and in the new year you can expect to get to know everyone and their research a lot better!
One example of successful outreach in 2023 was the participation of VOLT in Culture Night, where over 2000 visitors came to our Department's stalls to learn and engage with our research.
Field work
As well as wet and dry lab work, 2023 was great to go out to the field and collect in-situ data. Various VOLT members went to different ecosystems (from water to forest to Greenland) and in all kinds of weather, come rain or shine (or snow!).
We were even lucky enough to be able to collect data during a caterpillar outbreak! So, we are looking forward to analyse the data and see what interesting results will come out of them!
Scientific advisory board meeting
In addition to researchers, technical and admin staff, VOLT also has a scientific advisory board (SAB) that comprises four well-established experts: Colin Murrell from the University of East Anglia, Jaana Bäck from the University of Helsinki, Hans-Peter Grossart from IGB Berlin, and Jörg-Peter Schnitzler from Helmholtz Munich.
At least once a year, they visit VOLT to catch up, discuss, and provide expertise. This includes the PIs, as well as all the Center members.
In 2023, they visited on 25/09, with a great turnout from engaged VOLT members who asked lots of questions and took advantage of the SAB members being around to book some further discussions with them.
From the productive discussions with the management team, there were also several points of action that resulted in strengthening our scientific strategy going forward. For example, modelling will now be brought in much earlier in the process, and for that we are currently hiring a data scientist.
New equipment
With funding from the DNRF, as well as other funding bodies, we got some very cool instruments this year and some is also on the way for early 2024. Stay tuned for the tours (and hopefully exciting data!) in the coming year(s)!
VOLT retreat
In early November, we had our first annual centre retreat at Hornbæk!
23 members at all career stages attended and the two days were filled with fun, discussions, scientific and social activities.
After an introduction by our Center director Riikka Rinnan, a team-building exercise in the (Winter) sun to get to know each other better, and communal lunch, we had a workshop and some exercises on personality types. VOLT has a diverse and multicultural environment, so this was useful to get to know ourselves and each other better and see how we can collaborate, work together, and make the most out of everyone's strengths as well as understand and leverage the differences.
On the second day, the group was divided into two: there was a scientific brainstorming session to determine how the different VOLT PhD projects could fit together and what parts could be complementary, and a fun exercise about social media where our new Instagram account got populated by very creative posts.
Social activities and life at VOLT
At VOLT, we think that a healthy, happy, kind and diverse environment is key to promote discussion, collaboration and creative thinking and problem solving, so we balance hard-core science and nerdy discussions with fun and a relaxed and informal approach.
In addition to the social gatherings organized by the department and sections, we had several fun and social Center activities, such as the VOLT summer barbecue, pumpkin carving for Hallowe'en, snaps making and tasting, and Christmas hygge.
Also, we have fruit delivered every Monday, and there is cake at the VOLT-all meetings and snacks at the journal clubs.