This is the time of year at work dedicated to gathering the perfect team.

We can promote our topics and research questions to the students of the first master’s year of the Biology master, and they have the opportunity to choose their favourite topic for their thesis in the next year. A small ‘research market’ where everybody displays his most interesting research projects for the students to choose from.

This research market is a good thing, as it works in both ways: the students have the chance to find a thesis topic that really interests them, and in dialog with the researcher even shape it more to their needs and interests. On the other hand, researchers find people to help them in the field and a fresh brain to help thinking on design and analyses afterwards.

I personally love this opportunity to take students along. Without them, all my work out in the mountains would be impossible, or at least take me the whole summer. On top of that, they often enthusiastically dive into the topic, dig up some papers I really needed to find, force me to think about statistical solutions in more practical ways and list the pro’s and cons of the used methodologies in the most honest ways.

So to me, a master thesis student is much more than a field assistant. It is a part of the team, a young scientist with a fresh set of brains that is indispensable to be successful.

I am already looking forward to welcome the next ones!