The ACS National Meeting in April was one of the most significant trips I have been on, and by far the largest conference I have attended. I presented my poster, attended fascinating research talks, and networked with chemistry professionals.<\/p>\n
Presenting my poster yielded some interesting discussions with the people who stopped by — mostly other computational chemistry professionals, in fact. One evaluated me for the poster award, and he even one-upped me by knowing the directions of the transition dipole moments of indole, which I did not. Presenting to him was a good experience, because it was fun to walk through my entire project. Another professional said that if we could find a successful functional with TD-DFT, perhaps we could eventually publish our results. Talking to other students gave me an idea of how vastly different research topics could be within the domain of computational chemistry.<\/p>\n
I went to some great talks. I heard Harry Gray present on Solar Fuels, using catalysts inspired by plant photosystems, giving me a paper topic for my bioinorganic chemistry class. Later I got to hear the big talk on CRISPR, the gene-editing process and its potential implications in our lives. There were a lot of other good talks, but some less than inspiring ones — I heard someone present his graduate research on organic dyes for solar cells, a topic I was familiar with, but I was bored by his lack of passion. However, most of the talks were given with enthusiasm and depth.<\/p>\n
Networking was an interesting experience. The career fair got me out of my comfort zone and helped me practice speaking with people in a professional environment. At a speed networking workshop, I talked to a lot of retired chemistry professionals, which was not as useful, because they had only generalized advice to give me and no real leads. Nonetheless, I became more confident in myself after the networking experiences I had at the Meeting.<\/p>\n
A cool thing that happened was that I got to speak with the tech support at Gaussian about our research group’s problem with the Gaussian software — the confusion issue with excited state optimizations — and he gave me a few ideas to try. They haven’t worked so far, but they at least gave us something to move us forward on the issue and identify what does not work. I remain hopeful that we will resolve this issue with the software.<\/p>\n
Other than that, Kristine and I got to explore the city a bit and walk on the Golden Gate Bridge. Can’t beat the view from there! I hope I get to go on a similar trip in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ACS National Meeting in April was one of the most significant trips I have been on, and by far the largest conference I have attended. I presented my poster, attended fascinating research talks, and networked with chemistry professionals. Presenting … Continue reading