After starting my PhD recently (a month ago today to be exact),\u00a0 I was lucky enough to be invited, by my second supervisor,\u00a0to the Nordic Seminar on Computational Mechanics at Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden. And, of course, I accepted!<\/p>\n
With some last minute planning and already feeling like a real jetsetter, I booked my one night trip and the following week it was happening. I arrived on the second day of the conference, and jumped straight into\u00a0some parallel sessions on Structural Mechanics and Optimisation. In comparison to reading papers during the first few weeks of my PhD, these 20 minute presentations were a great quick insight\u00a0into\u00a0this broad and complex research area, and it was a great way to meet\u00a0and network with PhD students from other\u00a0universities.<\/p>\n
However, the real fun (and some bemusement) came when we were told that our conference dinner would take place at the \u201cUniverseum\u201d.\u00a0If you are asking yourself, \"What is the Universeum?\", you are not alone! The Universeum is a science centre (similar to @Bristol for those from my native South West) with a four-storey rainforest exhibit with sloths and other animals; a space exhibit (where I got to play a cool version of\u00a0space invaders with my supervisor) and an aquarium. As we were visiting out of normal opening hours (it felt a bit like Night at the Museum), before dinner\u00a0we had full access to the centre and its activities.<\/p>\n
We were escorted into the reptile and\u00a0aquarium exhibit where\u00a0dinner was to\u00a0be served.\u00a0As you can see by the picture - it was very cool! Although, I must admit eating Plaice in front of an audience of Plaice was a new experience for me! The evening continued with lovely food, wine and a hilarious\u00a0Eurovision song contest with the conference attendees. Although, I must admit me and my supervisor kept quiet when they were asking for further entries - what would we have sung anyway?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Author: Ellie Marsh - After starting my PhD recently (a month ago today to be exact),\u00a0 I was lucky enough to be invited, by my second supervisor,\u00a0to the Nordic Seminar on Computational Mechanics at Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden. And, of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":866,"featured_media":87,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,124],"tags":[62,93,54,126],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-department-of-architecture-civil-engineering","category-postgraduate","tag-conference","tag-dcarb","tag-msc","tag-pgr"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/128\/2016\/11\/Gothenburg-Aquarium.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/866"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/engdes-student-insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}