Over the last decades, research in the Solar Terrestrial sciences has greatly advanced our understanding of this huge system. For half a century, satellites and a continuously growing network of ground based observatories, have allowed us to get closer and make observations with higher precision than ever before. Together with more complex models, this gives us detailed knowledge on how the Sun affects its surrounding environment, and especially its coupling to Earth. As new space missions fill in today’s missing pieces of knowledge, new questions are born that need to be tackled by new thoughts. Being an Early Career Scientist, it is often hard to identify which questions are new and what has been answered before. In this short course we have invited a panel of renowned researchers. They will give their view on how far we have come in our understanding, and most importantly, on what challenges lie ahead for the young scientists to embark upon. This is an excellent opportunity to meet with the experts and discuss the future of our community. Target audience is students and early career scientists that want to increase their awareness of current and future research challenges within solar terrestrial sciences and to discuss their potential contributions. The audience is invited to propose specific topics and/or questions for discussion in advance to ecs-st@egu.eu.