Group dinner

One benefit for MRS meeting is for materials scientists and students to meet each other, and establish social network. I found another benefit of it, that is besides getting to know new colleagues, we also know our group members better.

Every year when we travel to Boston meeting we spend a lot of time together, much more than we are in the lab. And today, we gather together in PF Chiang and had a wonderful group dinner.

Graduate students, post docs and professors, we are a busy group of people. And I guess this is one of the reason why scientists like physical meeting so much.

 

University Chapter T-shirt competition

The last part of the University Chapter Luncheon is T-shirt competition. Six university chapters participated in the competition and finally Stanford University wins. Their T-shirt is very interesting and the girl showing it successfully excited the audiences. Congratulations!

We (SUNY-Binghamton) also attended the competition. Our T-shirt is a superman analyzing materials using Bragg’s Law. You can see from the photo attached.

The important thing for the competition is we meet each other, and communicate through the activities about our will to promote materials science.

 

 

 

University Chapter Luncheon

Today I attended MRS University Chapter Luncheon, as the new president of Binghamton University, this is actually one of my major activities for this meeting. The meeting schedule is pretty tight, from 12:00- 13:30.

Right after a delicious lunch, M. Stanley Whittingham, Chair of MRS Academic Affairs Committee, introduced the new chair of University Chapters and Special Projects Subcommittee, Yury Gogotsi. Then Mr. Gogotsi host the rest of luncheon, which basically introduced what university chapter can do and will do in the near future. Important notices are summarized here in case anyone missed the meeting:

1) University chapter may set up facebook or Linked-in pages for the chapter for better communication;

2) Request for travel reimbursement of fall meeting should be submitted before Jan. 15^th. The chapter requesting reimbursement should have written policy.

3) Call for symposium assistant for spring meeting.

4) Application deadline for special project grants is Dec. 15^th. (They still have a lot of spare money, so act quickly!)

5) University chapters are encouraged to participate in Nanodays event.

6) Introduced Disseminating Materials Research News & information & Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship Program (see photo attached).

Student chapter lunch

The student chapter lunch was very well attended this year: a couple of new chapters were started  and dormant ones were revived. In addition, the possibility to start student chapters outside the US was announced, which will certainly increase the student involvement in MRS. Quick presentations about outreach activities, the congressional fellowship opportunities and introduction of each student chapter was followed by the traditional T-shirt competition. Each chapter is invited to design and present a unique/funny T-shirt, which is then voted upon. This year's winner was Stanford with a very humorous T-shirt design...

early morning talks

After catching up with former colleagues at Harvard last night, I was lucky that the first presentation at 8:30am was especially interesting and kick-started the day. It also triggered some discussions about potential collaborations during the coffee break, since I'm working on a not-so-common fuel cell material system that is suitable for in situ studies at intermediate operating temperatures. Coffee breaks are just as important as the talks, for more in depth conversations and follow-ups!

MRS guide book

I found MRS guide book very helpful. The first part of the book, Daily Schedule of Events, is extremely useful to get a general view of all important events on each day. I usually check this part at first and after that feel other parts of my schecule by the technical sessions that I like to attend.

Frontiers of Materials Research

Come to Sheraton, Grand ballroom for the talks from two MRS medalists from 12 to 12:45.

There are too many poeple crowded outside Hynes 308 for Prof. Rogers talk on Bio integrated electronics. I wish I came here sooner to find a seat.

MIT DMSE Reception at 2011 MRS Meeting

Professor Chris Schuh, Head of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the MIT Alumni Association hosted a reception for alumni and friends held in conjunction with the 2011 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting. The reception was a good opportunity to meet old friends. (Acturally I had met many old friends when I listened to the talk or just walked around the meeting place.)

Rushing through different symposiums

Today I didn’t have a plan about which talks to attend before I rushed into the meeting. And then I found that some talks I attended were uninteresting to me and I missed some talks I might want to attend. The experience is a lesson for me: since there are many talks going on at the same time, we had better have a plan before we attend the meeting. Or we will find that we keep rushing through different symposiums but miss the talk we are most interested in.