Digital Kaffeeklatsch mit Wissenschaft

In order to contain the Coronavirus as effectively as possible, the MfN Berlin exhibition will be closed. With For Nature digital, the museum with its collection of 30 million objects can be experienced online in order to let you get inspired by nature and let you immerse into our research. As part of this, we are also experimenting with new formats and expanding our digital offering.

Live from #mfnberlin

Check out the museum digital event programme for an overview of current live events.

Kaffeeklatsch has also become part of this digital program and will start to have online (Zoom) events from May 10, 2020.

December 2021

For the last edition of the year, we invited Dr Verónica Díez Díaz, postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. She is currently starting her new German Research Foundation (DFG) project, in which she aims to understand the biomechanical patterns of several sauropod taxa, by studying the locomotion of their hindlimbs and tails. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their body), and four thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land.

Thanks to digitization, 3D musculoskeletal reconstructions and biomechanical analyses she will develop 3D models which could help us to better understand how these huge dinosaurs moved. Verónica also aims to calibrate these models by comparing the created digital tracks with the fossil ones.

Besides, Verónica is an advocate on best practices regarding the creation, storing and publication of digital data in palaeontology. She has been assessing some 3D surface digitization techniques (i.e. photogrammetry and structured light 3D scanning) in the vertebrate palaeontology collection of the MfN, looking for efficient methods for digitizing the specimens, but also looking for the highest quality possible of the created 3D models.

Come and join us for a cup of hot chocolate or coffee and discover why Verónica’s work is so important and why studying dinosaurs is still her favourite job in the world

Watch it here:

November 2021

This time we invited Franziska Ellen Walther, a master’s student at Humboldt University in Berlin. The geographer uses very special methods to research the interactions between water and land. Working at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), she has analyzed rivers and their surroundings to understand complex relationships between water chemistry, land use and geology. Her research focuses primarily on the river network of the Greek-Albanian Vjosa River, which is considered one of the last wild rivers in Europe. Her work consists of water sampling, its analysis in the laboratory and statistical analysis using modern technology.

Watch it here:

October 2021

  • Topic: Immunology – Why do some populations survive in any environment?
  • with Miguel Veiga, PhD student at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin
  • Moderation: Franziska Sattler
  • Event in English

For this exciting edition, we invited Miguel Veiga, a doctoral candidate at the Leibniz-Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin.
The Department of Ecological Dynamics, which he is part of, investigates how individuals, populations or species communities “behave” in space and time and under various anthropogenically modified environmental conditions, such as overpopulation, pollution and deforestation. The working group seeks understanding on what affects the viability of animal populations along a gradient of altered landscapes and habitats. In particular, Miguel’s research focusses on the laboratory validation of immune-assays (a biochemical test that measures the presence or concentration of an antibody or an antigen). For this, samples of the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) were collected.The spotted hyena is one of the most important carnivores in the Serengeti ecosystem and is both a hunter and a scavenger.  This makes the spotted hyena an ideal model species to study questions on topics such as; ocial behavior, host-pathogen dynamics, pathogen-host adaptations, and in Miguel’s case: immunology!

This approach ultimately allows for a clearer insight into the so far little explored field of Darwinian fitness consequences of infection in unmanaged animal populations. The ability of a population to survive in any environment, compared to other populations. Miguel Veiga is looking forward to sharing his knowledge and expertise on the aspects of spotted hyenas’ life-history with you. Bring a hot cup of coffee and all of your questions on spotted hyenas, parasites and Serengeti ecosystems!

Watch it here:

September 2021

  • Topic: Alzheimer’s – What actually happens when someone develops Alzheimer’s?
  • with Kiara Freitag, PhD student in the Department of Neuropathology at Charité Berlin and part of the German Centre for Neurodegeneration (DZNE) 
  • Event in German
  • More Info

Our guest Kiara Freitag is a PhD student in the Department of Neuropathology at Charité Berlin and part of the German Centre for Neurodegeneration (DZNE). She has always had an interest in diseases of the brain and during her bachelor thesis she dealt with the nerve cell disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After that, she devoted herself to Alzheimer’s disease.

Now she is researching in her doctoral thesis what influence nutrition has on our Alzheimer’s risk in old age. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most widespread dementias worldwide. Many people know someone with dementia, but unfortunately we have very few ways to help with the disease. This is also because we do not yet understand all the causes of Alzheimer’s disease. We ask ourselves: What happens when someone gets Alzheimer’s? For this, we look in particular at our immune system and inflammatory reactions in the brain. Why do some people get Alzheimer’s and others don’t? Can the cause be a viral infection in childhood? Or is the cause a poor diet? Does our diet have an influence on inflammatory reactions in the brain and can we perhaps change our Alzheimer’s risk in this way – so what would we have to eat in order not to forget in old age? Embark on an exciting journey through our brain and learn how these questions are researched in neurobiology in the laboratory.

Watch it here:

August 2021

  • Topic: How was our solar system formed and what happens when asteroids hit planetary surfaces?
  • with Dr. Christopher Hamann, geoscientist and staff member of the Impact and Meteorite Research Department at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
  • Event in German
  • More info

This time, the guest is Dr Christopher Hamann, Research Associate in the Impact and Meteorite Research Department. He is also head of the Electron Beam Microprobe Analysis and Scanning Electron Microscopy (Earth Sciences) laboratories, as well as Geo.X Coordinator at the Museum für Naturkunde. Since his Master’s thesis, Christopher has been researching physico-chemical and geological-mineralogical processes that occur during cosmic collisions, i.e. the impacts of asteroids on planetary surfaces. He bases his research on sample material from real impact craters and meteorites as well as on laboratory experiments with which he recreates the formation of craters and the extremely high pressures and temperatures that occur during them.

How do we actually know how the solar system and the planets were formed? What does it look like inside planets? Are there the same rocks on the Moon, Mars or in the asteroid belt as on Earth? Were there other planets in our solar system besides the ones we know today? And what actually happens when an asteroid or comet hits the Earth’s surface? Sure, it creates a crater, but can that have major consequences for the environment and life on Earth? Christopher is investigating all these and other questions at the Museum für Naturkunde in the department Solar System, Impacts and Meteorites. To be more precise, he deals with the history of the formation of our solar system and the Earth-like planets and minor planets (asteroids), and that’s exactly what he’ll be talking about with us in the next Digital Science Communication Cafe.

Watch the event here:

July 2021

This time we are joined by Dr Diana Alatriste González, neuroscientist and co-founder of the of the Charité PhD Network. During her PhD, Diana studied the development of neurons from the cerebral cortex, the most outer layer of the brain responsible of regulating processes such as learning and memory formation.

Neurons are nerve cells. Although present in the brain they can extend their branches (or neurites, as they are known in the field) for long distances to connect the brain to different parts of the body. As part of her doctoral thesis, Diana studied a protein who was previously described as an important regulator of the branching of the neurons. Mice missing this protein also present have a significantly smaller number of receptors in their cell membrane and present an autism-like behavior. How the absence of single protein can have such an impact?  Diana’s work combined in vivo (tested on whole, living organisms) and in vitro (test-tube experiments) techniques in molecular biology to find out what was the particular reason behind the reduced number of receptors and found out a new mechanism of this protein as a traffic regulator inside neurons.

Diana will help us understand how inhibiting the expression of one protein could help us understand and elucidate new, unknown functions for such protein within a cell or a system. How do proteins are transported inside our cells? What happens when proteins do not move properly? Can we talk about cellular traffic? During our discussion, we will find out the details and main characters coordinating protein trafficking inside neurons and how failures in the transport lead to protein traffic and consequent disease.
More Information here.

Watch the event here:

June 2021

  • Topic: Collection cataloguing and digitisation
  • with Dr Frederik Berger, Head of the Collection Digitisation Department in the research area “Future of the Collection” at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
  • Event in German

This time we were joined by Dr Frederik Berger, Head of the Collection Digitisation Department in the research area “Future of the Collection” at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Digitisation is a buzzword on everyone’s lips and affects all areas of life. But what does digitisation mean in the context of a research museum with a collection? Images or 3D scans promote research and are re-used in various areas of society, but the heart of the collection is the data associated with it. It provides information about the contexts in which animals were collected, allow insights into the past and at the same time provide a basis for biodiversity research today. Digitisation allows these data to be made available to a much larger user group than before and opens up access that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

The implementation and sustainable provision is a great challenge, which the Museum für Naturkunde has taken on and will implement in this decade. Dr Frederik Berger is concerned with the people, methods, standards and the processes that make this change possible.

You can watch the event here:

May 2021

  • Topic: The return of the mesosaurs to the sea
  • with Antoine Verrière, PhD student in paleontology at the Museum of Natural History Berlin
  • Event in English

In May 2021 we were joined by Antoine Verrière, doctoral researcher in paleontology at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Antoine is part of a team that studies the evolution and the lifestyle the animals that were living on land long before the dinosaurs.

Antoine does with fossils what others do with embryo: he tries to understand how they were growing, and what that tells us about their way of life. The animals he works on, called mesosaurs (do not confuse them with mosasaurs!), are the first reptiles to have transitioned from living on land to living in water. Long before other marine reptiles like plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, or turtles colonized the oceans of the globe, mesosaurs were the first to attempt a return to the sea. His research tries to understand how mesosaurs were swimming and living, and how their body adapted to their new environment. Learning more about how this transition happened can teach us a lot about how evolution works in general.

Watch the talk here:

April 2021

  • Topic: What does our future look like with social robots?
  • with Dr. Anna Henschel, neuropsychologist and research associate at the Gender in Medicine Institute (Charité Berlin)
  • Event in German
  • more here
  • Anna’s presentation slides (German)

This time we were joined by Dr. Anna Henschel, neuropsychologist and research associate at the Gender in Medicine Institute (Charité Berlin). Anna’s research is on social robots. These robots often have human faces or features and allow scientists to ask exciting questions about when a machine becomes a real interaction partner. So when do we perceive these machines as truly “real”?

The systems in the brain that have long been specialized to respond to human cues could eventually be addressed by human-like robots – right? Anna will ask these and more questions about our future with social robots at our Digital Science Communication Cafe and tried to answer them from a psychological and neuroscientific perspective.

March 2021

  • Topic: Taxidermy – A Special Craft
  • with Christin Scheinpflug, taxidermist at the Museum of Natural History Berlin
  • Participation via Zoom and YouTube
  • Event in German
  • more here

This time we were joined by Christin Scheinpflug, taxidermist at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Taxidermy is a very special craft and our current techniques and lifelike exhibits leave visitors of all ages in awe. Excellent taxidermists, like Christin, possess not only a thorough technical knowledge but also a real knack for artistic craftsmanship. Instead of “stuffed animals”, she creates lifelike objects that are both scientifically and aesthetically convincing.

In this Science Communication Cafe edition, she explained to us how mammals are prepared, how much craftsmanship, patience and passion goes into the preparation of exhibition objects and gives us a glimpse behind the scenes of the work in her taxidermy workshop.

Check out the recording here:

February 2021

  • Topic: The perception of pain and the role of empathy in it
  • with Helena Hartmann, psychologist and PhD student at the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Unit at the University of Vienna
  • Event in German

For February 2021, we invited Helena Hartmann, psychologist and PhD student at the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Unit at the University of Vienna, is with us. In her work, she is conducting research in the field of social affective neuroscience on the neurophysiological basis of empathy (compassion) using pain as an example. Empathy refers to the ability and willingness to recognise, understand and empathise with sensations, emotions and thoughts of another person. How is empathy for other people’s pain processed in the brain and to what extent is our body’s own perception of pain important in this? Is our empathy partly based on our own experiences? And what happens to our empathy when we take pain medication?

In Helena’s work, she focuses specifically on the role of the somatosensory pain processing system, which is responsible for the basic perception of pain. For example, do we feel another person’s pain in exactly the same part of the body? You can also find more information about her exciting research on her website .

Check out the recording here:

January 2021

For this edition, we invited Dr. Florencia Yannelli, a researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin. In her current position, she is dedicated to understanding how certain alien plants become invasive in cities. Alien invasive plants are more conspicuous than many of us realize, and though the term sounds like she is studying some sort of scary army of green creatures, these plants share our spaces with us in our cities, forests, crop lands, etc. They tend to be these beautiful “wild” flowering plants covering entire areas. Such species have been moved around by humans, sometimes on purpose for being of use, but others were introduced to a new area accidentally. Yet not all of them actually become a problem.

Florencia is interested in understanding what makes some of them successful invaders, in other words, how do they make it to dominate our ecosystems. Even if when dealing with plants we tend to think on what we see, looking a bit on the “underground” side, she studies the role that soil microbial communities might have in helping such species become invasive. All of this information is also useful to understand how we can effectively restore plant communities that have been invaded by these problematic aliens. During our conversation we will find out what are these invaders, how do they become invasive and what can we do about them – but most importantly we will discuss why we should care about them.

Check out the recording here:

November 2020

This time we have invited PhD student Alexander Fiedler. He is doing his research at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin in the field of biophysical analysis. Our immune system is not only a protective shield against bacteria, viruses and parasites, but also an important player in the body’s own healing process. To investigate the role of immune cells in bone healing (e.g. after a fracture), Alexander takes a look at the bones of living individuals. Bone healing requires complex interactions between bone-forming cells, immune cells and blood vessels. For a successful healing process it is important that the underlying cellular processes happen at the right place but also at the right time.

How Alexander and his research group have developed a novel combination of microscope and endoscope with which he can observe live how blood vessels sprout, tissue is formed and rebuilt until the bone is completely restored, he explains this time at our Digital Science Communication Cafe! Bring along a lot of questions and a thirst for coffee!

Watch it back here:

October 2020

  • Topic: “super-powers” of aquatic plants
  • with Marta Alirangues Núñez, doctoral candidate at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB)
  • Moderation: Franziska Sattler
  • Participation via Zoom and Youtube
  • Event in English
  • more here on the official website

This time we invited Marta Alirangues Núñez, doctoral candidate at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). Her current research is constructed with her team in the Aquatic-terrestrial coupling and regime shifts working group in the Department of Ecosystem Research.

Marta focuses on the study of periphyton (algae that grows on surfaces underwater) and its effect on the development of aquatic plants in lakes. She also studies how fishes and macroinvertebrates (any animal lacking a backbone and large enough to see without the aid of a microscope) affect the amount of periphyton growing on the plants, also known as “trophic cascade”. “Her lakes”, as she likes to refer to them, go from Müggelsee (biggest lake in Berlin), to beautiful lakes in the north of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Probably, one of the best parts of doing so much fieldwork is to get to visit so many beautiful places.

During our café, Marta will talk about the “super-powers” aquatic plants have, how important they are, not only for lakes and rivers and their inhabitants, but also for us, humans, and how they contribute and maintain good water quality.

Join us to learn more about the research at Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and Marta’s contribution to understanding our ecosystems. Bring along a lot of questions and a thirst for coffee!

Watch it back here:

September 2020

In September we had invited Dr. Eliana Buenaventura, Scientific Head of the Diptera Collection (two-wing collection) at the Museum für Naturkunde. The collection is an extremely valuable resource, as some species are no longer present in nature today due to species and ecosystem loss. On the other hand, new species are constantly being found in the collections and researched by Eliana Buenaventura. Collecting data from museum specimens such as insect abundance and distribution data can also contribute to our understanding of human impacts on the environment, including climate change.

At the Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery of the museum, Eliana monitors about one and a half million prepared flies and mosquitoes and uses these insects as a source of biological tissue for phylogenomic studies. Her research falls into the field known as ‘museomics’, where museum specimens or parts of them are used for genomic studies. Thus, she uses very small amounts of DNA preserved in museum specimens for answering biological questions, similar to a forensic scientist who uses DNA traces to solve crimes. Actually, some of her flies are of forensic importance, so her works, at times, is truly related to forensic sciences.

Watch it back here:

August 2020
1st anniversary edition

  • Topic: Inflammatory diseases and intestinal microbiota
  • with Lisa Budzinski, PhD student at the German Rheumatism Research Center Berlin
  • The event takes place via video conference (Zoom and YouTube).

In August, Lisa Budzinski presented her work at the German Rheumatism Research Center Berlin.

“Go with your gut.” Everyone has heard this saying before and it is true that our intestinal health has a great influence on our well-being. Rather, the bacteria in the intestine, known as the intestinal microbiome or intestinal microbiota, have a significant influence on our immune system and can therefore be the decisive factor between health and illness.

Around 10% of the German population suffer from chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatism, psoriasis or intestinal inflammation. In those affected, the composition of the intestinal flora (intestinal microbiota) has changed compared to healthy people (dysbiosis). The intestinal flora is not only a mirror of our health, but can also influence the clinical course, the risk of cancer and the response to therapy.

Lisa would like to elucidate this connection in the context of her doctoral thesis at the German Rheumatism Research Center and therefore look at the individual bacteria at lightning speed with laser light in order to detect signal molecules between the immune system and the gut microbiota. Let’s see what the two have to tell each other.

Check out the recording here:

July 2020

  • Topic: Mini brains from the petri dish
  • with Vira Iefremova, Research Fellow and PhD Candidate, Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology, University of Bonn
  • The event takes place via video conference (Zoom and YouTube).

We invited Vira Iefremova, a research fellow and a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology in Bonn. Her work combines advances in stem cell biology, molecular biomedicine, and neuroscience for a better understanding of human brain development. As a stem cell biologist, she is reprogramming human skin or blood cells to their undefined (almost embryo-like stage) and later on using them to generate 3D cultures. Quite often, these 3D cultures are also being called “mini-brains.” Vira is using them to study how the grey matter of the human brain develops and what might happen when some genes, involved in this process, are mutated. During our discussion, we will find out whether “mini-brain” in the Petri dish is fiction, exaggeration, or reality.

Find out more about the event here.

Check out the recording here:

Take a look behind the scenes here:

June 2020

  • Topic: [bio’nd] Material & Clothing. What new textiles and materials will surround us in the future?
  • with Jannis Kempkens, designer and materials researcher at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee and co-founder of the circular design studio Circology

In June, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin presented the Digital Science Communication Coffee. This event was part of the [bio’nd] project on the occasion of the Science Year for bioeconomy, which is being realized at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in cooperation with the IZT – Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment and Ellery Studio.

T-shirts made of coffee grounds or wood? Clothes made of algae? Jackets made of spider threads? Vegan shoes made of fermented tea? Raincoats and bags made of compostable plastic insect carapaces? What will the things of our everyday life be made of in the future? How will the bio-economy clothe us in the future and how will it feel on our skin? The textile and design industry is already experimenting in many ways with bio-based materials under the buzzwords “Green Design”, “Sustainable Design” or “Circular Design”, some of which have already been successfully tested. So how do sustainability designers produce? Where are the opportunities and challenges of biobased textiles and materials?

Watch the entire talk here:

May 2020

In the FIRST digital May issue of Kaffeeklatsch mit Wissenschaft, Anna Taranko presented her work in the Department of Immunology. As a research assistant at the Charité and the German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin, she is researching the autoimmune disease of systemic lupus erythematosus, also known as the butterfly rash. Her work focuses on the cells of the innate defense system and their relevance for the course of the disease in the kidney. Using a laser scanning microscope, the immune cells and surrounding tissue structures can be made visible and photographed.

At the Kaffeeklatsch, Anna gave us an insight into the basics of immunology and autoimmune diseases as well as into the work of a scientist and how this has changed due to the contact restrictions caused by COVID-19.

Anna has been a guest at Kaffeeklatsch mit Wissenschaft in the past. In September 2019, she first introduced us to herself and her research at the live (in-person) event at the MfN Berlin. Her work drew a lot of attention to the event and the museum itself and I am over the moon to welcome her back to a second round of Kaffeeklatsch and as my first online guest of the format.

Check out the recording here: