Amina Ahmed is one of the student reporters for the Tropentag 2019. Our team asked her some questions about her participation during this week and the participant told us a little about her experience so far:

Why are you a student reporter at the Tropentag this year?

As a scientist, I believe I can effectively communicate results obtained from research and experiments with colleagues and professors from the same field, but I find it hard to vehiculate these pieces of information with people from other fields. Some of the participants or enthusiasts of Tropentag are not scientists or natural scientists - and reporters work as tools to give a chance to the outer public to understand what is going on during the conference and to connect people that share the same interests.

How did you come here?

Checking the website from the University I attend - University of Goettingen - I read the news that Tropentag was looking for student reporters. Fortunately I applied and was accepted into the team.

What are your expectations?

As a student reporter, I expect to see in-depth the newest findings from researches from all over the world. I anticipate being able to extract scientific information and communicate it in a simple language, via blog post, to our readers what the scientists, researches and research institutions and policymakers are doing. I hope we can integrate the whole international community with the "Tropentag universe".

What do you want to know more about?

My educational background is in Food Sciences and Technology. Everyone has to eat - so it is a sensitive topic. I hope to see what the news in Food Sciences are currently about - what is new with regards to food security, product development and food products analysis methodologies, for example. It is not only about eating - our food has to be enjoyable and healthy. I would like to also learn from the challenges faced by those projects presented - from their failures and their successes. Even negative results can teach you a lot; research and knowledge development is not only about publishing the final results but to also learn from the eventualities that may have gotten in the way.