On Monday March 19th I had the amazing opportunity to present the early earth atmosphere portion of the BETA project at the National meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana. 13 of us from the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry were able to go to the conference and it was an amazing experience!
I was able to go to some amazing talks looking at different aspects of different types of spectroscopy as well as going to some talks about preparing for and applying to graduate school. It was an incredibly valuable professional development experience because there was also a graduate school fair that many of us attended to get more information about what programs are even out there that I may have not considered had I not been able to talk to them.
During the two hour poster session I had a number of people come up and talk to me about my research and I had a great time talking to them. I also had a lot of fun talking to other undergraduates at the poster sessions I was able to talk to different undergraduate students about their projects and tell them about mine.
For me the best part of the conference was being able to experience the full scope of what chemistry is studying right now and that was incredible! There was such a wide range of talks and posters on a little bit of everything! There was also a vendor fair which was just crazy to look at because I am used to doing reactions in lab courses on the super small scale but here at the expo they were selling lab setups used for industry so there were things like giant round bottomed flasks that were spinning on massive stir plates with beads or glitter suspended in water in them!
Overall the conference was an amazing professional development experience for me as well as being a ton of fun and I hope to attend a conference like this again in the future!!
Overall the conference was an amazing professional development experience for me as well as being a ton of fun and I hope to attend a conference like this again in the future!!