In addition to presenting my work at the poster session as Dr. Kennerly already mentioned, I attended a wide variety of talks and events at the ACS National Meeting. Some of the talks were related to my field of research, such as one by Dr. Joseph Subotnik. That said, one of my favorite things to do at ACS is always learning about new areas of chemistry, so I went to quite a few talks out of sheer curiosity. One I particularly enjoyed discussed modifying the surface coatings of solar cells to allow dust to be washed off more easily, making them more useful in desert areas. I had never realized how significant of a problem dust was for solar technology, so it was fascinating listening to someone who had devoted significant amounts of time to fixing this problem.
Since I am graduating this year and searching for a job, I also participated in some of career building workshops offered at the conference. In particular, I attended one which was designed to allow undergraduates to network with professionals from all areas of chemistry. There were quite a few people representing academia at this event, and I think it would have been a bit more helpful if there were more from industry and perhaps also the government. That said, I met with a representative from ACS who directed me to some helpful resources for recent graduates, so it was a worthwhile event.
Overall the conference was fun and instructive and definitely worth the trip.
Hi Kristine, thanks for the report. A useful edit would be to add some links, I’m thinking specifically for the ACS meeting website, one for Joe Subotnik. If you remember who the speaker you enjoyed about solar cells was, that would nice too.