Poster Session and The FREE food!!

Wednesday Session

FREE food in the Wednesday Poster session

More free food on Wednesday Poster session

THE OPEN BAR on Wednesday Poster session

If you are a grad student, you know how much you like free food. And if you read PHD comics, you know how universal that liking is for all grad students. So I was a bit disappointed on Tuesday that neither the talk nor the poster session provided enough food for everyone. During the poster session on Tuesday, the food was gone after half an hour, and if you were not lined up at the beginning, chances were that you would not get any. What's more, the food is always cheese, fruit, and vegetables (I know I shouldn't complain as long as they are free, but...). However, the situation is totally different on Wednesday, real all-you-can-eat dinner and a open bar, and the amount is unlimited! 

Something about the poster session itself. Even though the session today has nothing to do with what I am researching, I still find several posters intriguing. One of them is on using PEG modified extracelluar matrix to enhance the diffusion of nanoparticles. Normal approach is to coat the nanoparticles, but since the surface of the nanoparticle is precious for other functionalization, the author chose to functionalize the extracellar matrix. I enjoyed listening to the author describing the thinking behind this shift. It made me think whether similar thinking pattern can be applied to my research. Also enjoyable in the poster session is the hand-shaking: one will meet a couple of old colleagues and hopefully make some new friends. 

For free food or for hand-shaking (a.k.a, networking) and for looking for inspiration, go to the poster sessions!!

Comments

[Bob Braughler]

Just a quick note about the food -- we place our orders in part based on past attendance at particular functions. Obviously this time we missed the mark at Symposium X and the first poster session.

We're always trying to balance the amount we charge for registration with the ameneties provided. When you consider that we pay $100,000 for coffee alone then you begin to see the magnitude of the expenses that MRS faces when planning a meeting. We want to keep the registration fees as reasonable as possible.

[Wendong Wang]

Thanks for the note, Bob.
I was by no means judgmental.