The Gordon Research Conference

My first "encounter" with the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) series was from Professor Michael Plewa. In my undergraduate research with virucidal materials for water purification, we started a collaboration with Professor Plewa for testing the cytotoxicity of our metal-oxide materials on mammalian cells. During that summer, we were rushing for results in one particular week as he was going to absent the next week for this Gordon Conference. (As we were working in his lab and his equipment, we needed to be under his supervision).

One of those days, Professor Plewa exclaimed his excitement for the upcoming conference. Of course, I had to ask what it was as I had neither heard of it nor thought anyone could get that excited over a single conference. The discussion was short, but memorable as he gave a brief summary that a GRC was one of the best things ever.

In pure delight, he told us that you had the best scientific talks in the morning,  then open scientific discussion in the afternoon, then more talks in the evening, and then you drink the rest of the evening.

To make it better, you repeat all of this over the next few days.

The way he spoke of this made it seem to be the holy land of the scientific community. (Where as the holy grail would be publishing in Science or Nature I suppose). Not only was he going to be attending, but two of his students would be presenting posters as well. Professor Plewa was excited about attending, but also for his two students attending!

The last words he told us on this topic was, "If you ever have the chance, make sure you attend one."




So last week I attended my first Gordon Research Conference in Physical Metallurgy, and hopefully not my last one.

Done... and not done...

I successfully defended the oral part of my dissertation yesterday (albeit a little bit rough again). My committee members signed their names down on the form to verify their approval (although they never checked the box for "pass"...) And then this question from a committee member/advisor came up:

"So what is your timeline for the papers after your thesis?"

It never ends. The dissertation accounts for a large part for completing a PhD, although ultimately only a small part in the academic community. Needless to say, even after defending, I have a lot of work to be done in transforming my chapters to papers now.

The other amusing question, from colleagues, was, "How do you feel?"

To which my response is, "the same."

After completing such a large milestone, I don't feel any different amusingly. In fact the post-doc who asked me this question said this seemed to be the same response always. Your friend's start calling you, "Doctor" for fun (or sometimes "Philosopher"). However, there is research that still needs to be done. There are still questions that I cannot answer. There are always papers to be written.

Maybe in a few more days I'll feel different, but for now, back to fun questions =)