Wednesday was the day of my presentation and the most relevant to me in terms of the other talks taking place as well. There was only a morning session: so a short day but very informative. The "celebrity" of my field (Ping Chen), who was the first to discover the system reversibility was also speaking, which was exciting! My talk went well once I got over initial nervousness, and I had no difficult questions, so all was well :-)
The afternoon had a planned excursion to a country house. Having worked in one for 5 years I decided to take the opportunity to go out on the bike. I plotted a 70 mile route on Google and headed out into the sunshine. 5 and a half hours later, I got back after climbing over 4,500ft, having wished I'd also plotted the elevation! I just about had enough time to turn myself around for the conference dinner at Old Trafford, the Manchester United football stadium. This was exciting for a lot of people, but not me! The dinner was good, although a bit late coming...
Thursday was less well attended, probably due to the number of people out until gone 2am the night before! The plenaries were interesting reports from the US Department of Energy and a group using metal hydrides in satellites. I spent the rest of the morning working up my experimental data from the previous week whilst watching the Commonwealth womens triathlon race. After a trilogy of cheesecakes at lunch, I went to some interesting afternoon technical sessions on a range of topics: including one from someone who had waited so long for a UK visa that their flight landed 30 mins before their presentation!
Again, before the poster session I went to the quays, swimming one more lap than on Tuesday! The poster session was more relevant to my work today and therefore more interesting and productive.
Friday was just a morning session, but with some interesting presentations. It seemed a shame for the presenters that the programme was quite bare, but the attendance during the sessions was reasonably good.
Overall: a well organised and productive week. It has definitely given me and my supervisor some things to think about for the future and provided a great opportunity to meet and talk with other researchers from around the world in this area.
The afternoon had a planned excursion to a country house. Having worked in one for 5 years I decided to take the opportunity to go out on the bike. I plotted a 70 mile route on Google and headed out into the sunshine. 5 and a half hours later, I got back after climbing over 4,500ft, having wished I'd also plotted the elevation! I just about had enough time to turn myself around for the conference dinner at Old Trafford, the Manchester United football stadium. This was exciting for a lot of people, but not me! The dinner was good, although a bit late coming...
Thursday was less well attended, probably due to the number of people out until gone 2am the night before! The plenaries were interesting reports from the US Department of Energy and a group using metal hydrides in satellites. I spent the rest of the morning working up my experimental data from the previous week whilst watching the Commonwealth womens triathlon race. After a trilogy of cheesecakes at lunch, I went to some interesting afternoon technical sessions on a range of topics: including one from someone who had waited so long for a UK visa that their flight landed 30 mins before their presentation! Again, before the poster session I went to the quays, swimming one more lap than on Tuesday! The poster session was more relevant to my work today and therefore more interesting and productive.
Friday was just a morning session, but with some interesting presentations. It seemed a shame for the presenters that the programme was quite bare, but the attendance during the sessions was reasonably good.
Overall: a well organised and productive week. It has definitely given me and my supervisor some things to think about for the future and provided a great opportunity to meet and talk with other researchers from around the world in this area.
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