The following blog is contributed by Dan Davies of the '14 cohort.
At Easter time this year, in order to finally break out of the annual habit of stuffing my face with inadvisably large quantities of chocolate, I travelled to Seoul in Korea where Easter is altogether less of a big deal. I was kept on the straight and narrow as far as this goal was concerned by my supervisor, Aron, and a PDRA from the group, Jonathan, who also came along. As well as this purpose, there was of course other academic motivation for the trip.
Firstly, Aron was giving an intensive 12-lecture series to Masters students on materials for solar energy at Yonsei University and Jonathan and I delivered a lecture and practical workshop each on using the programming language Python as part of this course. I have always had a great deal of respect for lecturers and educators in general, but this respect increased enormously after going through the time-intensive and energy-zapping process of preparing and delivering just one (albeit quite long) lecture and one workshop. It was certainly a really valuable exercise for me from a skills perspective and I was really pleased with how it went. I think this was helped to some extent by how motivated and diligent the students were though- outstanding attitudes to learning all round!
Secondly, a small workshop had been organised by Professor Seungwu Han at Seoul National University (SNU) on Electronic Structure of Materials. This was a fantastic opportunity for the three of us to present some of our work in a fairly relaxed setting. Having said that, it is slightly daunting when the person speaking after you is an associate dean at Korea’s largest public university. SNU is a seriously large university too- with over 200 buildings, if you get the bus there and get off at the wrong stop, you could be in for a trek across the mountain that would put you in mind of the final scenes of the film ‘Touching the Void’.
Lastly, my international supervisor is Professor Aloysius Soon from Yonsei University so I was also able to meet him in person and fill him in on what I’d been up to so far as well as have some exciting discussions about the direction of my project. The only evidence I have for this last meeting is a photo of Aolysius, some of his group members and I, eating some incredible pizza. This is a remarkably unflattering photo, so instead I’ll leave you with a picture of a lovely fountain-mountain combo on the Yonsei University campus.
As well as the above activities, we were able to explore many of the other delights that Seoul had to offer, including an excellent café culture with the best coffee I have ever tasted; some of the most unusual but delicious food I have ever come across; what must be the cheapest, most efficient and easy to use subway system on the planet and truly flabbergasting views of the city from the top of Namsan tower. Seoul, I will be back!
Dan is currently working on his PhD project: 'Interface engineering for indium-free transparent electronics' with Professor Aron Walsh, Dr Duncan Allsopp and Dr Ben Morgan.
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