Thanks to the support from the European Association of Geochemistry I was able to attend the Molecular Evolution workshop which took place from the 19^th to 29^th of July at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woods Hole is a very picturesque place at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod and the site of a large number of marine science institutions.

Now in its 28^th year, the Molecular Evolution workshop is well established and bringing together wet lab people, theoreticians and software developers from various backgrounds and career levels interested in contemporary topics in molecular evolution. It was a great platform to meet people with similar research questions but from very different scientific communities and to exchange ideas and learn from each other.

My research is about the microbiology and biogeochemistry of Arctic glacial surfaces and the workshop was addressing a wide spread of topics that are important to answer my research questions and were including phylogenetics, population genetics and comparative genomics.

All in all ten very inspiring days and I would like to thank the EAG for giving me this opportunity that allowed me to expand my knowledge and scientific network. I was very happy to promote EAG and I highly recommend the EAG ambassador program to my fellow early career scientists.

Steffi Lutz is a PhD student in the Cohen Geochemistry group in the School of Earth & Environment at the University of Leeds. She is supervised by Liane G. Benning, Alexandre M. Anesio (University of Bristol) and Fiona Gill and is working on the biogeochemistry of glacial surfaces.
Steffi is also the EAG Early Career Councillor, and as such is appointed EAG Ambassador.