IUCr Conference

(a blury image of me giving my talk)

The IUCr (International Union of Crystallography) is a large conference that is held every three years.  It is a large conference with several thousand participants. People from all over the world attend. As part of my travel grant from the U.S. National Committee for Crystallography funded by the National Academies, the awardees were allowed to observe the General Assembly where the representatives of all the nations who are members of the IUCr make science policies. It was such an honor to have been selected for this particular travel grant, as most of those awarded were post docs, early career scientists or about to finish their PhDs. Observing the general assembly has been a really interesting experience because these policies affect all researchers in the field. It has been fun to watch.
Each of the travel grant awardees is assigned a mentor that is from the US and we had a dinner with our mentors. My mentor was part of the commissioning and design team for TOPAZ. His name is Victor Young and it was nice to get have a good conversation during the dinner of traditional Spanish food that is from this area of Spain. 
Also, we were invited to the US-Spain speed networking reception. My area was Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography. There were only myself and two other senior scientists in this section. One was from Sweden and the other Scotland. It was nice to get to talk with them and learn about what they are doing. They were also really interested in my work and very encouraging.
Overall, I have met many people and had lots of interesting conversations. The talks I have heard have been well done and on very good research. I have learned a lot and hope to attend again next time when the IUCr will be in Montreal, Canada.
My talk was on Thursday morning and the first talk in the micro symposium. It was intimidating to know one of the very best world experts in diffuse scattering Richard Welberry was also a speaker. The micro symposium was held in one of the two conference auditoriums and there were about 150 people attending. The talk went well and I got lots of encouragement afterwards by some of those who listened. All the speakers had a photo taken (below) and received a certificate. This has been a very positive experience and I am very grateful to have been given this opportunity and to have been invited to speak

The five speakers and two symposium chairs on either end