730. WE-Heraeus-Seminar

730. WE-Heraeus-Seminar "From Interfaces to Cages - Confining Effects on Molecular Processes"

Since most scientific conferences have been shifted or cancelled as a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, we were lucky, that after a long-lasting break of scientific exchange and networking, we have been able to conduct the 730. WE-Heraeus-Seminar “From Interfaces to Cages – Confining Effects on Molecular Processes” in the Physikzentrum, Bad Honnef from September, 27th – 30th, 2020. While 35 participants have been on site, >70 (early-stage) researchers, especially from foreign countries, followed the seminar online. Even though it was a challenging task to conduct a hybrid seminar, the conference was a great success from the organizational point of view. Hence, we sincerely thank the WE-Heraeus foundation and the Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef for the great implementation of the challenging administrative and technical task!

15 invited talks, two contributed talks, 26 flash talks and two poster sessions ensured a varied and balanced seminar program with a lot of fruitful discussions! Even though we have been missing informal conversations with online speakers, we were grateful and happy about the openness to discussion from both, virtually and physically present participants and for frequently visited online posters.

In addition to the excellent administrative organization, we would like to express special thanks to Kevin Scholten and the scientific organizers for the undoubtedly successful conference from the scientific point of view! A scientific seminar highlight was the opening talk of the noble price winner John Polanyi, who presented scientific achievements in chemistry in one dimension, precisely on dynamics of surface reactions. During the course of the seminar, a wide range of state-of-the-art knowledge on the basis of experimental and theoretical work has been given to emphasize the dynamics of spatially confined molecules with regard to various environmental conditions and time scales.

Seminar Program