I would like to thank the Royal Meteorological Society and its Legacies Fund for supporting my attendance at the RMetS Impact of Science Conference 2017 for student and early career scientists and the RMetS Annual Conference 2017.
The Impact of Science conference took place at the UK Met Office and included an impressive programme of speakers working in areas of Arctic, Tropical, Microphysics and Aerosol impact research, Forecasting and Data Impacts. The keynote sessions were excellent and I particularly enjoyed the one in Science Communication: Lessons from the past, learning for Future Impact.
Delegates had a range of climate research and forecasting backgrounds and the organisers hosted a superb ice breaker evening so we could all get to know each other. There were multiple networking opportunities throughout the conference for delegates to talk to each other and to the speakers.
I thoroughly enjoyed the student conference and it provided me with valuable opportunities to hear about my peers’ research and also research being conducted by organisations such as the UK Flood Forecasting Centre at the Met Office. I was delighted to be awarded a prize by the organising committee for my poster presentation on some of my PhD research; Speciation of organic compounds in rainwater from León, Spain, using high resolution Mass Spectrometry.
Thanks to the Legacies Fund, I was also able to attend the RMetS Annual Conference: Weather and Climate Impacts. There was an excellent range of esteemed keynote speakers and workshops. The parallel sessions offered different topics for delegates to choose from; some of these were in the form of interesting talks and others were more interactive, allowing delegates to consider different scenarios in topics like hazard impact observations and climate resilience in urban environments.
The poster sessions during the annual conference allowed me to network with researchers from different companies including the Met Office and National Physical Laboratory, which was very valuable for me as I am in my final year of my PhD and am considering my future career options.
I am very grateful to the RMetS Legacies Fund for supporting my attendance at these events and I also want to thank the organisers for hosting two fantastic conferences!
Anna Fee
PhD Candidate, Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Cambridge, UK.
