“Trying out for the Tropentag is an excellent opportunity to get an exposure”, says Brigitte Maass who has been mentoring graduate students and early career scientists throughout her 40 years of scientific career. “I like mentoring and I always make sure that my students gets to submit an abstract for oral or poster presentations before they leave to their home countries”, she added. “The Tropentag is a great opportunity to meet people and to see what scientists are doing, young and old alike – nobody works on long term projects – so it is important to keep and maintain relationships and build new once”, she said. maintaining relationships I even got a piece of this advice, “…don’t forget your linkages in the Philippines, send a short email, send your papers - it is important to remain on the surface. As we say in German, aus den augen aus dem sinn, which means, If I don’t see you, I will not think about you anymore..”. It was nice talking to you! I hope I can meet you again in the next Tropentag. What a mentee has to say about the Tropentag Fred Wassena of CIAT Tanzania has been mentored by Brigitte Maass. Fred confirms that Tropentag is a good platform to build networks in one’s scientific career. He presented both an oral and poster presentation for this year’s Tropentag.