Tropentag, a conference of which participants are carrying tons of information in their heads. A very little amount of this information is presented in posters and shared in 10-minute oral presentations. What is the meaning beyond all this academic research and how does it contribute to the real life? And even further, how can the information gathered inside the walls of the University of Bonn for 3 days be used and understood in the world outside? “These are the questions we should ask from ourselves all the time,” Dr. Carla Roncoli from the Emory University says. According to Dr. Roncoli, there are two kinds of science and scientists. First, there are the academic scientists, more concentrating on the science itself. The questions that drive the main journals are not always the ones that contribute to the real world, though. These scientists often end up for example to teach in the Universities. In my head this means that they continue to live in the scientific world. Then there are the ones contributing more to the real world. Dr. Roncoli sees herself as a representative of this category, the category with more social aspect. Neither one of these two categories, Dr. Roncoli says, is better than the other. Valuable research is made within both of them, and researchers come up with important results and raise new questions. Dr. Roncoli herself has done interdisciplinary research and appreciates the different ways of learning and understanding things.

Albert Engel, from GTZ told us his opinion about the tropentag. He considers Tropentag as an avenue to look up broad spectrum of research and to link up to the people who are doing the research. Accoding to his opinion it is an important event to identify the bottlenecks, information and research need and an opportunity to get in contact with people who are interested in development cooperation. Watch his inspiring comment about the student reporter, an innovation of the Tropentag 2010