Grußwort

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is a great pleasure, on behalf of the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM), to host the Annual Meeting of the VAAM from 03–06 April 2011 in the facilities of the “Stadthalle” in Karlsruhe. The conference is organised by members of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the BASF SE. We are very happy to welcome highly-ranked international speakers who will talk and discuss on the different fields of microbiology.

The broad scientific programme will cover a range of current topics including cell biology, environmental microbiology, food microbiology, microbial interactions, new imaging and other innovative techniques, stress responses and white biotechnology.
Furthermore, there will be main symposia, short lectures, a career symposium, and several poster sessions. The conference will also host an industrial exhibition. In this regard we would like to give a special thanks to all sponsors, exhibitors and to the DFG in advance.

In particular, we encourage young scientists and students to participate in this meeting. We have arranged large space for poster presentations and adequate time slots in form of oral sessions for lectures. There will be ample opportunities to discuss presentations and to consult with the experts.

We invite you to submit your abstract, preferably online, related to one of the conference topics or other relevant fields of microbiology. The abstracts are later going to be published in the magazine BIOspektrum (Spektrum Akademischer Verlag GmbH).

It would be a great pleasure to welcome you to the Annual Meeting of the VAAM in Karlsruhe.

Yours sincerely

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Fischer