In July 2012, with financial assistance from a Legacies Fund grant, I attended the 2012 Royal Meteorological Society's Student Conference. The four-day conference was attended by approximately 90 early-stage researchers, predominantly PhD students, most of who either presented a poster or gave a short talk about their research. Attendees came from a number of institutions and had research interests across a wide range of meteorology-related fields.
I presented a poster entitled which detailed the current stages of my research into the atmospheric chemistry of volcanic plumes, detailing the developments that our research group have made with adapting the WRF-Chem model to address the questions of bromine chemistry within the volcanic plumes. The poster also presented preliminary results from modelling work I have undertaken on the fixation of nitrogen in volcanic plumes.
My poster was prepared with the help of my supervisory team at UEA and was generally well received. I discussed it, and my wider research, with the other attendees both during the dedicated poster session and throughout the conference. This opportunity to network with other researches and discuss the ideas that had been presented in the talks and posters was invaluable. Through discussions with other modellers I have discovered tools and techniques I was not previously aware of, and I hope to implement some of these into my research over the coming months.
We were also privileged to receive talks from highly respected researchers in the meteorological sciences who provided us with advice on how we can progress our research careers. Group sessions where we formulated a small funding proposal for science communication were also useful in preparing for this aspect of academic life.
Like many of the attendees, I am a 1st year PhD student, and, as a result, have not previously attended an academic conference such as those I would hope to attend as my career progresses. The nature of this conference, with its inclination towards early-stage researchers, meant that it was the ideal environment for my first presentation of research and general conference experience.
I am very grateful to the Legacies Fund and the Royal Meteorological Society for providing the assistance which allowed me to attend this meeting.
