In the first half of the year 2019 we experienced many successes: Maria Kristalova successfully defended her dissertation. Matheus Leusin won the Best Paper Award at the EMAEE Conference in Brighton for his research about the global competition in artificial intelligence. The Input-Output Workshop, co-organized by our research group attracted an international audience to Bochum. Tobias Wendler at this event presented his most recent environmental economic research. Maria Shkolnykova realized a research visit at NIFU in Oslo and Katharina Friz at the Jagiellonien University Cracow within their dissertation projects. Muhamed Kudic received an invitation to the University of the West of England in Bristol, and he published twice in the highly acknowledged journal „Regional Studies“. Charlotta Cordes, Mareike zum Felde, Ann Hipp, and Jarina Kühn joined our team in Bremen to work with us on the project Mod-Block-DDR. Jutta Günther took part in an expert jury „Digitalization“ of the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and she has been appointed as a member of the scientific advisory board ot the Research Center Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen. The Bremen Research & Policy Lab (BreLAB) started its work and launched the web site. Our visiting colleagues and cooperation partners within joint projects and activities were: Uwe Cantner (Friedrich Schiller University), Claudius Gräbner (University Duisburg-Essen), Thomas Grebel (Technical University Ilmenau), Maciej Grodzicki (Jagiellonien University Cracow), Lutz Schneider (University of Applied Sciences Coburg), and Daniel Schiller (University of Greifswald). Last but not least: Aline Tchaparian compleded with very good results her traineeship in the secretarial office of our working group under the supervision of Marcel Lange. 

We cordially thank all colleagues and cooperation partners and wish everybody a productive summer break and nice vacation!