22 July 2026 – Universitätsclub Bonn
Something changed in February. Not everything. My time as Director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy came to a close. Yet: My curiosity is still here. My sense of responsibility is still here. My collaborative spirit is still here. And the story continues…
Watch the symposium’s finale – Nadia Singer’s music and my closing remarks.
That is how I opened my closing remarks at Making the Invisible Visible, a symposium celebrating five decades of Very Long Baseline Interferometry at MPIfR: the science, the international collaborations, and the people who have made it possible. From the first VLBI measurements with the Effelsberg telescope to the Event Horizon Telescope images of M87* and Sgr A*, this has always been a story shared by many.
We met on 22 July at the Universitätsclub Bonn, for an afternoon conceived as a salon: science, music, and conversation in dialogue with one another.
Jürgen Renn traced the arc from Einstein to the EHT image, from a single idea to the scale of collaboration that Big Science now requires. Antxon Alberdi, a companion of many years from Granada, looked back on five decades of VLBI at the institute. Between them, and after, Nadia Singer answered at the piano with Gershwin.
The second half turned outward. Three early-career researchers, Lena Debbrecht, Alexei Nikonov, and Saurabh, spoke about their own science, their aims, their concerns — the generation the work now belongs to. A panel with Ken Kellermann, Agnieszka Słowikowska, Lutz Stenvers, and David Hughes took up international cooperation, the next generation, and industry.
The afternoon closed as it began, with the piano, and with a reception in the foyer generously supported by MPIfR and NRAO.
See the symposium’s program.
More to come soon: video of all contributions, the music, and photos from the afternoon.