Creating public awareness for science in general but also scientific methods, results, and organizations is an essential task in our current society. We were therefore very excited when we got invited by the Modellansatz podcast to talk about the GAMM Juniors and our newly founded research journal GAMMAS. Thus, in May 2019, we, that is the GAMM Juniors Kerstin Lux and Benjamin Unger, met with Gudrun Thäter from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technolog, who records the pod-cast together with her colleague Sebastian Ritterbusch.

The Modellansatz Podcast tells stories about how mathematics, and more generally natural sciences, enter our everyday life, thereby targeting a broad, and also non-specialist audience. It sheds light on current research topics but also on the personal perspective of individual researchers. Although mathematics is usually associated with lots of formulas, the Modellansatz Podcast offers a different path to dive into scientific mathematics by individual stories of the researchers themselves. For more details about the podcast, we recommend to visit the info page of the podcast.

For us, this was the first time to record an audio podcast, and we were both excited and a bit nervous as well. After everybody was equipped with a microphone, Gudrun Thäter started the recording, and the podcast quickly turned into a conversation about the GAMM, the GAMM Juniors, GAMMAS, and our research interests. After the initial excitement, it felt similar to a coffee break talk, which we are used to from various conferences. For more details about the episode, we recommend to listen to the actual podcast. We thank Gudrun Thäter for inviting us and the friendly atmosphere she created.

Podcast episode: http://www.math.kit.edu/ianm4/seite/ma-gamm-juniors/de

Kerstin Lux, Benjamin Unger

Due to the success of the previous two YAMM lunches at the GAMM Annual Meetings in Ilmenau/Weimar (2017) and Munich (2018), the GAMM Juniors have organized the YAMM lunch for the third time, taking place during the Annual Meeting in Vienna in 2019. This event addressed young scientists and established experts working in the fields of applied mathematics and mechanics.

During this year’s YAMM lunch, we have welcomed twelve experts who represent different stages of the academic career path. An abundant buffet was served in the Kleiner Festsaal at the University of Vienna, which created a festive atmosphere due to its rich décor. The lunch started with a short opening by the organizers, who introduced all experts briefly. Afterwards, intensive discussions among participants and experts started. In contrast to the previous years, a specific topic was not selected in advance such that discussions were free to evolve about various topics, such as general experiences in science, career strategies, as well as challenges in academia, such as finding a good balance between work in science and private life. Once again, the interest of participants in the YAMM lunch was very high, i.e. all available tickets for the lunch had been sold out rapidly, such that the GAMM Juniors plan to organize the YAMM lunch for the fourth time during the GAMM Annual Meeting in Kassel next year.

The GAMM Juniors would like to thank all experts taking part in this event, sharing their personal experiences and giving valuable advice, thus contributing to the succes of this events. Many thanks of the GAMM Juniors are also addressed to the local organizing committee for their support during the organization of the YAMM.

Johanna Eisenträger, Tobias Kaiser, Christoph Meier

The GAMM Juniors were founded in 2012 to strengthen the voice of junior researchers and to support the rejuvenation of the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik (GAMM). Since then, each year ten new Juniors are appointed for a three year period. The GAMM Juniors are active members in many boards and committees of the GAMM and organize and host various events specifically addressing the interests of junior researchers throughout the academic year, in particular during the time of the GAMM Annual Meeting.

We are proud to present the Activity Report of the GAMM Juniors, that highlights mosts the activities of the GAMM Juniors in the years 2012 until 2018.

Benjamin Unger

After more than two years of preparation, the new open-access journal GAMM Archive for Students (GAMMAS) is now online and has published its first article: ‘A Resonance Tracking Approach from Adaptive Control‘ by Meike Gierig and Lars Flessing. The GAMM Juniors encourage excellent Bachelor and Master students to submit their research results to GAMMAS. We particularly emphasize that GAMMAS also publishes failures, i.e., methods and tools that do not work for specific problems. To ensure reproducibility of results, all authors are encouraged to submit source code used for simulations along with their manuscript.

During the setup phase, the GAMM Juniors discussed various conceptual detail such as the license type and the review mode and spend a lot of time to create the LaTeX template, the online journal systems, and many small details such as guidelines, the copyright notice, email templates, logos, and many other things. The first submission was used to optimize the journal process – giving the Juniors a new perspective about what is happening on the “other side” of a journal.

We strive to establish GAMMAS as a recognized journal for student research and are looking forward to new contributions. For more information about our journal or to read the article, please visit our homepage.

Dominik Kern, Benjamin Unger

Following the successful first Young Academics in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (YAMM) lunch at the GAMM
annual meeting in Ilmenau@Weimar, the GAMM juniors decided to continue with the new format at the annual meeting
in Munich. The idea of the YAMM lunch is to create an informal atmosphere for prospective young scientists and
successful experts from applied mathematics and mechanics to discuss career opportunities and how to balance family
and work.

At this year’s lunch, we were happy to welcome ten experts who represented the various stages of the academic career
path.. The main topic of the lunch – which was provided at the Vorhoelzer Forum with a beautiful view over the city
and the Alps – centered around the question how to combine a successful academic career with family planning and
work-life balance. The importance of this topic was highlighted by the fact that all available tickets for the YAMM
lunch were sold out quite fast. Due to the big interest and the feedback of the participants the GAMM Juniors are
happy to announce that the YAMM lunch will continue at the next annual meeting in Vienna.

The GAMM Juniors thank all the experts for sharing their personal stories and valuable advice, and thus for providing
a fruitful atmosphere to render this event a success. Many thanks of the GAMM Juniors are addressed to the local
organizing committee for their support during the organization of the YAMM.

Lutz Pauli, Benjamin Unger

The GAMM Annual Meeting will take place in Munich from March 19 – 23. As every year, the GAMM Juniors will organize a number of different events and activities during the meeting. The traditional GAMM Juniors poster session is scheduled on Tuesday, March 20, during the the afternoon coffee break. The poster session is an  exclusive format for GAMM Juniors, where they can present their research and discuss their work with a broad audience.  On Wednesday, March 21, 12:30 – 14:00, the GAMM Juniors will organize the YAMM (Young Academics in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics) luncheon. The YAMM which is a good opportunity for juniors scientists to discuss different aspects of their academic career with experienced researchers. This years main topic is “Family and Academic Career”. To participate in the YAMM, one needs to purchase a ticket when registering for the GAMM Annual Meeting. Please note that there is only a limited number of tickets available, so we strongly encourage anyone interested in participating to register for the annual meeting as soon as possible. As always, the annnual spring meeting of the GAMM Juniors will be held on Friday, March 23, in the afternoon, subsequent to the official ending of the conference. Members of the GAMM Juniors should take this into consideration when making their travel plans. Usually, the meeting ends at about 17:00. A detailed agenda will be provided in time before the conference. All former and present GAMM Juniors are invited to join the GAMM Juniors Alumni Dinner on Thursday evening at Schelling Salon(http://www.schelling-salon.de). Anyone interested in joining us should contact Dominik Kern, who is responsible for making the reservation. We are looking forward to seeing you in Munich!

The autumn meeting of the GAMM Juniors took place from 27 to 29 September in the beautiful city of Vienna. By organizing the meeting outside of Germany for the first time, we hope to contribute to the ambition of the GAMM to be an international organization.  The meeting was mainly organized by Melanie, who works as an assistant professor at the Institute of Lightweight Design and Structural Biomechanics at the TU Wien.

Also for the first time, a short collaborative workshop was held on the first day of the meeting. The main goal of this workshop was to promote academic exchange between GAMM Juniors working in different fields and disciplines. We hope that all participants gained a basic understanding of the biggest questions, challenges and tools from other academic fields and we intend to host a similar workshop again at the autumn meeting next year.

The remaining two days of the meeting were devoted to the organization of various projects and events such as the YAMM 2018 “Family and Academic Career”, which will be organized by Benjamin and Lutz at the annual GAMM meeting in Munich. We also made significant progress in setting up our undergraduate research journal and managed to make the first complete test runs from submission to publication with Open Journal Systems. Another major topic was the preparation of our input for the upcoming meeting of the GAMM Future Committee (Zukunftsausschuss).

Besides hard work and academic exchange, we also found some time to enjoy Vienna and its surroundings. Melanie had organized a beautiful evening sightseeing tour through the city center as well as trip to the Kahlenberg, where we could enjoy some Sturm (young wine) directly at the vineyard.

The 4th GAMM Juniors summer school on „Bayesian Inference: probabilistic learning from data“ took place from 10th July – 14th July at the TU Braunschweig. The school attracted 50 participants from Germany, Austria, France, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and other countries. Invited lectures were given by H. Matthies (TU Braunschweig), Y. Marzouk (MIT) and J. Denzler (University of Jena). These lectures covered a broad range of topics such as probability theory, uncertainty quantification, Bayesian inference and machine learning. Further lectures and exercises on Bayesian inverse problems and uncertainty quantification were given by the organizers B. Rosic, C. Schilling and U. Römer.

On Friday, several participants presented results from their own research to stimulate discussions. Additionally, there was an invited lecture by M. Eigel (WIAS) on Bayesian inversion in hierarchical tensor representations. The scientific program was accompanied by a guided city tour and a barbecue at the beach club Okercabana, which was well received among the participants. The support of GAMM and GRK2075 was crucial for the success of the summer school and is greatly acknowledged.

This year at the annual GAMM meeting Ilmenau@Weimar the first young Academics in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (YAMM) session was held. This lunchbreak discussion brought together eleven experts with young interested PhD-students and post-doctoral fellows to discuss about career opportunities for young academics.

The experts were coming from various stages of academic career being senior Post-Docs, junior-professors or senior professors with an own research group as well as this years von-Mises arwardees. During an informal lunch valuable discussions about funding and career systems in different countries, strategies for successful application for research funding as well as about family and career emerged. Many thanks of the GAMM-Juniors are addressed to the local organizing committee for their support during the organization of the YAMM.

The interesting questions of the participants and the valuable informations provided by the experts led to many fruitful discussions and made this first YAMM a success.
So we are pleased to announce that the YAMM will continue at the GAMM 2018 in Munich with the topic “Family and Academic Career”.

Melanie Todt