The 72nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting from 25 to 30 June 2023

My name is Lena Schorr and I am a PhD stu­dent from the Puschhof Lab at the Ger­man Can­cer Re­search Cen­ter (DKFZ) in Hei­del­berg work­ing on the mi­crobi­ome and can­cer. I par­tici­pated in the 72nd Lindau No­bel Lau­reate Meet­ing in June 2023 after being nomi­nated by the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia. I was invit­ed to spend one week in Lindau to­gether with around 40 Nobel laure­ates and 600 young scien­tists from more than 80 na­tions. The event start­ed on Sun­day, 25 June, opened in a fes­tive cere­mony with wel­com­ing words from Coun­tess Betti­na Ber­nadotte af Wisborg, presi­dent of the Council for the Lindau No­bel Lau­reate Meet­ings, music from the en­sem­ble of the Vien­na Phil­har­monic or­ches­tra, and speeches and lec­tures from poli­ti­cians and Nobel laure­ates. The next days start­ed with a lakeside morn­ing workout with a beau­tiful view of the mountains.

Every day was ac­com­panied by great lec­tures, Agora talks, Open Ex­change ses­sions, and spe­cial events such as part­ner break­fasts with Mars, In­cor­po­rated, or Rolex SA. In the eve­nings, social gath­erings were orga­nized with events such as an Inter­na­tional Get-Togeth­er, a Grill&Chill Even­ing or the Ba­varian Even­ing where all par­tici­pants were en­couraged to wear tradi­tional cloth­ing from their coun­try as a sign of our diver­sity.

One of my per­sonal high­lights was meet­ing Nobel laure­ate Frances Ar­nold, who was rec­og­nized for her bril­liant con­tribu­tions to the use of di­rected evolu­tion to create en­zymes with im­proved or new func­tions. Ar­nold has in­spired many young scien­tists, in­clud­ing me, and gave food for thought with phrases such as "My grandma said I could do any­thing - and I be­lieved her." or “I was just born with too much self-confi­dence, so I don’t stop at prob­lems and pity my­self but rather solve them or move on.” An­other high­light for me was the Sci­ence Walk, where I had the op­por­tunity to take a walk around Lindau Is­land with Nobel prize win­ner Rich­ard J. Rob­erts. He en­couraged us young scien­tists to bring our ideas into the world, to found com­pa­nies, to be brave in pursu­ing our ca­reers and find­ing our indi­vidual nich­es.

Not only the close con­tact with the Nobel laure­ates char­acter­ized the meet­ing, but also inten­sive ex­changes with young scien­tists in­clud­ing fruit­ful dis­cussions about topics such as diver­sity, pub­lish­ing pro­cess, men­tor­ship or Open Sci­ence. A funny coin­ci­dence was meet­ing Sam­uel Nobs from my sister labor­atory at the Weizmann Insti­tute in Israel, who I had al­ready pub­lished with, for the first time in per­son.

My main take­aways were seeing the diver­sity among young scien­tists from all over the world, dif­ferent per­spec­tives and chal­lenges in their re­search, and the over­all pas­sion to con­trib­ute to sci­ence. In con­clu­sion, I re­turned from the con­fer­ence moti­vated, in­spired, but also very tired. So many sci­ence lec­tures, in­spir­ing peo­ple, fun and long nights - it was a great expe­rience for me as a per­son but espe­cially for me as a sci­entist, giving me the op­por­tunity to con­nect with like-minded peo­ple and expe­rience the real Lindau spir­it.

Text: Lena Schorr