1 year of VOLT: a review of 2024
2024 was the first full year running for VOLT, and what a year it has been!
We started strong with external visitors already from January: Arnaud Praplan, atmospheric chemist from the Finnish Meteorological Institute, spent a month at VOLT working on a collaborative project (soil reactive emissions from boreal forests: impact of site and soil properties, and effect on atmospheric chemistry - project SoREmi), and also in January we held a mini-symposium on freshwater trace gas fluxes. For this, we were joined by Michael Steinke from the University of Essex, Isabelle Laurion from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, and Genevieve Chiapusio from University Savoie Mont Blanc. Later on, this resulted in one of our PhD students, Ellen Slater, going to Lake Geneva to do sampling and experiments, and Isabelle's PhD student Riley Hughes came to VOLT to add VOC analyses to her project.
New members, visitors and collaborators
In 2024, we have hired several PhD students, postdocs, and a new lab manager, as Kajsa Roslund, our previous lab manager got her own funding to continue to work at VOLT but now as a postdoc in very exciting projects. These hires were both with funding from VOLT, as well as other various grants that our PIs were able to secure.
Among these, Riikka Rinnan also got a grant from our institution for a sabbatical for a visiting Professor, Laura Meredith from the University of Arizona.
Towards the end of the year, Kathrin Rousk and Jing Tang also got a DFF grant each.
The year was also filled with short visits from collaborators, as well as longer visits from international PhD students.
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 (with a mixture of presentations for PhDs, postdocs and collaborators), and VOC lunchtime meetings (informal meetings over lunch to present and discuss ongoing work, give and receive feedback, and troubleshoot).
National and International conferences
Many VOLT members have attended and presented at several national and international conferences. For example, Riikka Rinnan, Kajsa Roslund, and Yi Jiao presented at the 9th PTR-MS conference in Seefeld, Austria. Jing Tang presented at the DANEMO Symposium (dynamics and modelling of biological systems).
Publications
2024 was a very productive year. You can read more about our full list, as well as some selected highlights for the year here.
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!
In 2024 we hired a student assistant, Sofie Kalum Schou, to help with administration, but with a focus on communications, and she designed the VOLT extended visual identity based on our logo, revamped our Instagram account with explainer and funny videos, recorded and edited several "Meet the Researchers" videos for our YouTube channel, made 3 different beautiful designs for our mugs, as well as a banner.
Two examples of successful outreach in 2024 were the participation of VOLT in Culture Night, where over 2000 visitors came to our Department's stalls to learn and engage with our research, and the organization of Pint of Science, where some of our researchers presented their work to the general public in an informal setting with beers and laughs.
At VOLT, we love photography: we had our own competition, that resulted in an exhibition on our corridor and two big prints on canvas in the kitchen, and Center members have also participated in the DNRF photo competition (Annika Engroff), the Arctic Science Summit Week 2024 (Marta Contreras Serrano), and the Department's science photography competition "On the Edge" (Ida Roos Friis, Kajsa Roslund and Nasmille Larke-Mejia).
Field work
As well as wet and dry lab work, 2024 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!).
Here are some pictures from New Zealand!
First follow-up visit from the DNRF and scientific advisory board meeting
In 2024 we had our first visit from the DNRF, where we spent half day presenting and discussing over delicious croissants. This was a success, and the DNRF were very impressed with the progress and enthusiasm at VOLT. The Center 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 joined the talks online. So, in the afternoon, the management team caught up with them for feedback and discussions.
VOLT retreat
Following the success of the 2023 retreat, we had our 2024 annual retreat inSeptember in beautiful Bautahøj.
28 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, there were team-building exercises, communal meals, workshops and several talks that were short, engaging, and informative. 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 - there were also fun games on the grass with a nice sea view!