More than 250 scientists met online for the CMWS DAYS 2021

About 275 participants from 19 countries met online from 24th-25th March 2021 for the CMWS DAYS 2021 to discuss the key challenges in molecular water research and the status and future of the Centre for Molecular Water Science (CMWS).

Water is the most important liquid for our life and plays an important role in biology, chemistry, physics, and geoscience with high relevance for many societal challenges such as climate, sustainability, energy, environment, and health. Despite its central role and numerous research efforts worldwide, we are still lacking a comprehensive molecular picture of the hydrogen bonding network believed to be responsible for the wealth of effects in water. The CMWS initiative brings together key experts to approach the understanding of the fundamental questions about molecular processes in water and at water interfaces systematically. By now 45 partners from different institutes around Europe and beyond have already expressed officially their interest to participate in and support the CMWS initiative.

During the meeting the status and the future perspectives of CMWS were presented. This includes the recently launched CMWS webpage (cmws-hamburg.de) and the White Paper describing the scientific mission of the CMWS. The KU Leuven in collaboration with CMWS recently successfully secured funding from the Research Foundation of Flanders opening up their NMR facility to CMWS users. Sadia Bari, future Helmholtz professorial appointment within CMWS, presented her vision for her research on the dynamical local structure of isolated to solvated proteins.

In the framework of the “CMWS Early Science Program” (ESP) collaborations between CMWS network partners have been established. This year the second ESP round has just started, adding 10 new projects to the already running 9 projects from the first round. During the meeting young researchers had the opportunity to report the status of their research projects within the program.

As a part of the CMWS DAYS 2021 the 20th annual DESY Research Course for students, young research fellows and interested scientists was focused on ”Water in the Molecular Life Sciences”, which is an essential part of the CMWS research agenda.

Website CMWS DAYS 2021: https://indico.desy.de/e/cmwsdays2021

(From DESY News)