I’d like to acknowledge the generosity of the Royal Meteorological Society Legacies Fund and thank them for providing financial assistance that made it possible for me to attend the 4th African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) conference in Toulouse, France in July 2012. Having the opportunity to attend this international meeting allowed me to present my research to many of those within the field of African meteorology and gain some very useful feedback to improve my research. Furthermore, being present at this conference was important as not only was it an excellent occasion to showcase my PhD work, but I was also representing my research group TAMSAT (Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite and ground based observations) which excels itself on providing reliable rainfall estimates for all of sub-Saharan Africa. This was of interest to many attending the conference as rainfall is a key theme running throughout a lot of research on African meteorology yet gaining reliable rainfall data is very difficult. This was very important for the TAMSAT group as it allowed more scientists to be aware of our rainfall products.
As a young scientist, attending such a conference where a whole range of people are present from fellow young scientists up to the biggest names in the field provides the best opportunity to network with such people and being at the AMMA conference certainly allowed me to network well and build new links.
Since the conference, a number of people have contacted me regarding my PhD research which would unlikely to have been possible if it wasn’t for attending the AMMA conference.
