HISTORY OF THE CONFERENCE
The annual conference was first held in the year 2000 at the Education Training Facility of the Technical University of Košice in Herľany (Slovakia) and was organized by the Faculty of Mining, Ecology, Process Control and Geotechnologies, Technical University of Košice (Slovakia) and Faculty of Natural Sciences of Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia) under the original title "The Scientific Conference of Students and Doctoral Students". The founders were, at the time, doctoral students of these two faculties: Marianna Kováčová and Julián Kondela and the first scientific guarantors were Prof. Shah Wali Faryad, CSc. (Košice) and doc. RNDr. Pavel Uher, CSc. (Bratislava). The conference was continuously organised here for five years and the students from Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland enjoyed going to this conference.
In the year 2005, Faculty of Geology, Geophysics and Environmental Protection, AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków (Poland) joined the organisation thanks to two doctoral students, Jaroslaw Majka and Jakub Bazarnik. Dr inż. Ewa Szewczyk became the scientific guarantor for their faculty. From this point on, the conference has been rotating between Košice region (Herľany), southern Poland and Bratislava region.
During the first years, there was one conference and one excursion day, and the conference participants were allowed to present in their mother tongues. At the conference in Miękinia in 2005, the number of participants exceeded 50 for the first time and that brought extension of the conference to three days (2 conference days and 1 excursion day). The requirements were gradually changing. At first, only the presentation slides were required to be in English (from 2006 y.) to compensate for the difference in pronunciation in different Slavic languages. Later, when the number of participants from various other countries started to grow, the language of the conference was fully changed to English.
Since 2010, each year the best student presentation has been presented with an award. The prizes were provided by Galicia Tectonic Group. In 2013, the award was named after Rudolf Mock (RMA) and since then, the prizes have been provided mostly by the Geological Club. From the beginning, only presentations given in English have been evaluated.
Over the years, the organising team has gotten a little bit younger, occasionally changed and some new members have been added, the same goes for guarantors. Nowadays, the organizer for Slovakia is usually the Geological Club, and for Poland AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków or Fundacja za AGH, and the faculties provide scientific guarantee of the conference every year.
The nickname of the conference is Herlandia because we founded the United Kingdom of Geology in Herľany during one of the first five years.
Information and abstract books from previous years