No. 111/2020

14 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 111/2020 FOCUS which Nowsheen Goonoo came to Siegen. Whilst the Sie- gen scientists’ research on biodegradable nanomaterials benefitted fromGoonoo’s material expertise on the indig- enous Mauritian plants, aloe vera and brown seaweed, the visiting researcher from the small island state in the Indian Ocean was able to acquire experience working with an atomic force microscope. Another win-win situation is the cooperation between Nicole Wrage-Mönnig from the University of Rostock and the Georg Forster fellow, Chabi Djagoun, from Benin. This contact also came about through the Humboldt Network. Whilst the ecologist fromAfrica made the Rostock research group rethink what were seemingly self-evident assump- tions about photosynthesis, for instance, he himself was able to use the isotope ratio mass spectrometry facilities in the Department of Grassland and Fodder Sciences to investi- gate which plants feed the common tsessebe, a species threatened with extinction in his own country. What many members of the Humboldt Family experi- ence for themselves is not only confirmed by the Founda- tion’s evaluations, but also by work like that of Caroline S. Wagner, professor of international relations at Ohio State University, United States. She explores the relationship between a country’s science system and its politics and soci- ety. Together with Koen Jonkers from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, she studied 36 countries’ pub- lication and citation data. The outcome was that the strength of a country’s science, calculated according to publication numbers, citation frequency and co-authorship, correlates with its willingness to host international researchers. “The more people travel and exchange ideas, the more a country benefits. The more open a country is through exchange, the more scientifically important and influential it becomes,” Caroline S. Wagner summarises. So, researcher mobility helps networks and countries to meet the challenges posed by the future. But to what extent do researchers in a digit- ised world really need to be in the same place at the same time in order to work together and benefit from one another? Are new technologies obviating the need for climate-dam- aging air travel to conferences and research visits? DIGITAL NETWORKS ARE MORE OPEN “Physical and virtual mobility should not stand in binary opposition to one another. The challenge is to discover how both can be practised best in the highly flexible, dynamic meshwork of interlocking networks so that the knowledge we need for the future can be produced. In new, multi-di- mensional networks, this knowledge should be understood as a structure, not a personal good. It is up to all of us to create the ‘Humboldt Network 4.0’,” is the appeal voiced by Hans-Christian Pape, President of the Humboldt Foun- dation. The American microbiologist, Beronda Montgomery, has addressed the question of how social media and digital plat- forms can be used to create sustainable, functioning net- works. She herself is also active in digital networks: “Over the past three to four years, I have been actively engaged in a number of groups on Twitter, networks of sup- port, networks of mentoring. Some of those are disciplinary, others are things like #BLACKandSTEM which is a com- munity to support African Americans in the sciences,” Montgomery reports. She thinks the major advantage of digital networks is quite simply how open they are. “So, I ARE NEW TECHNOLOGIES OBVIATING THE NEED FOR CLIMATE-­ DAMAGING AIR TRAVEL TO CONFERENCES AND RESEARCH VISITS?” “