Networking facilitates success regarding our research goals and career. However, networking can also be tricky sometimes. Therefore BEACON 2026 is also dedicated to providing a low-barrier opportunity to foster academic interaction, create new ties, and initiate collaborations across departments and divisions. There will be different possibilities to reach this goal, for example during informal coffee breaks as well as during the apéro that completes the day. More important, however, will be the Academic Speed Dating. Over the course of 30 minutes, you will have three 10 minutes short academic speed dates with fellow researchers from other divisions.

The conference offers a 1-hour Poster Session after lunch, which will be split into two parts: for the first 30 minutes, half of all presenters will be at their poster, and the other half of presenters will have a chance to go around and learn about the presenters’ works. Then we will switch: for the next 30 minutes, presenters become visitors, and visitors become presenters. The Poster Session is a chance to present your past, current, or planned research, so you can hand in preliminary data, real data, or also the study design. Finally, there will be three poster awards, where you get the chance to win a prize for the best poster in a specific category, rated by your colleagues at the conference!