Every year a familiar conference is organized by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Chemical Research Center. The main focus groups of the event are Hungarian young scientist and PhD students. This year, on 26^th May 2011 the Scientific Secretariat of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Chemical Research Center and Institute of Nanochemistry and Catalysis decided to rename the event Erika Kálmán Doctorate Conference after one of the founders, Dr. Erika Kálmán.

Dr Kálmán worked hard to organize the school every spring with the main goal of giving the opportunity to young PhD students to present their work in front of a plenum in order to share their results, to obtain some new ideas and to improve their presenting abilities.

In memory of Dr. Erika Kálmán, two former students of hers – Aranka Pilbáth and András Paszternák, who had their PhD thesis defence in 2009 and 2010– have held a presentation summarizing all the energies possessed by Dr. Erika Kálmán, who was a fantastic person, a great professor and supervisor, a reputed researcher, a director of the Institute of Nanochemistry and Catalysis. She was a type of character who cared about her employees and who maintained an informal, cordial relationship with most people. Even, we, her PhD students called her Erika.

If she were among us, she would sit in the first row of the conference room and would attentively listen to all the presentation of the students.

Dr. Aranka Pilbáth