I attended my last TMS conference (as a graduate student) last week in Orlando, Florida.
Aside from my qualms on Disney World as the location of the conference, I had a great time overall. Partially this was because of the great weather in Florida, but also just the breadth of talks and discussion at the conference and "out of the conference."
What do I mean by "out of the conference"? For everything else that wasn't officially on the conference schedule. This included stopping by the TMS socializer in the Presidential Suite, where along with my culprits, we were clearly not appropriately dressed and (jokingly) not important enough. But I did get a great view from being up on the 20th floor...
I can't network like my friend, although I had the opportunity to reconnect with a wide variety of people whom I had met when I first started graduate school and attended the first 3DMS conference and workshop back in 2012.
The conference itself was excellent with a wide assortment of topics and great speakers. Although this also presented an issue of questioning what I wanted to do in the future? There is a lot of development in synchrotron techniques to obtain better 3D information, providing the answers to some long-time questions (such as where do critical events like crack and voids nucleate). Although at the same time this open up many questions as well. Along that line, there is increasing focus on the microstructural aspect and role of material failure, i.e. what pair of grains lead to failure or enable provide slip transmission? Then there is still the field of recrystallization and grain growth, which has been gaining momentum again now that the 3D techniques allow us to confirm behaviors that were proposed in the past. While the development of Olmsted et al. 388 grain boundaries by molecular dnyamics in cubic materials have opened up a number of new findings regarding the grain boundary property (i.e. energy, mobility, etc.) landscape. Then there's still the issue of grain boundary networks...
But aside from all of this, I attended a great talk given by Dr. Michelle Dickinson, or alternatively nano-girl, (see her TED talk!). The symposium was organized by a group of Purdue graduate students, called, "Messaging Research to a Broad Audience." Her talk was titled, The Power of Small Words for Big Impacts." The focus is entirely on how to get the message across correctly to a layman and not another scientist, and how this is important in the scheme of public outreach as a scientist. She openly admits that she has taken a set-back in her career to do public outreach, but it has also opened up a very different career path compared to her fellow co-workers. In doing so, she has had the opportunity to go on TV and discuss science topics, meet the prime minister of NZ, and even Sir Richard Bronson. As a result, her funding hasn't always came from the government, but from private individuals instead. This, in my opinion, is quite an accomplishment.
I also had the chance to talk to her on what a graduate student can do to improve his or her public outreach. Her response: "Keep blogging."
