A GUIDE AROUND EGU 2019
ESR1, ESR 2, ESR 3, ESR 4, ESR 5, ESR 6, ESR 7, ESR 8, ESR 9, ESR 12, ESR 13, ESR 14, ESR15 | @ VIENNA, AUSTRIA (7-12 April 2019)
“The EGU General Assembly 2019 was a great success with 5,531 oral, 9,432 poster, and 1,287 PICO presentations that were attended by 16,273 scientists from 113 countries” (Copernicus Meetings, 2019).
SLATE was well represented with 12 PhD candidates, PIs (Achim Kopf, Michael Clare, Carl Harbitz, Finn Lovholt, Michael Strasser) and Aggeliki Georgiopoulou from the advisory board presenting their work.
Get your patch and let’s get started.
Presenting our work
Rachel, Jonathan, Tugdual, Shray, Kate, William and Matthias drew crowds of people into the lecture rooms with their amazing presentations. They spoke on a variety of topics; covering different aspects of turbidites and their evolution, contourites and submarine landslides.
“I was very happy to be able to present my work at this conference, as it gives an occasion to present our work in front of a wide audience with very diverse backgrounds. I came out with very good feedback and advice for my work.” (Tugdual Gauchery, ESR 3)
„It was my first time at the EGU and it was overwhelmingly large. I had the opportunity to talk to several researchers after my talk – it is always good to get feedback on both the positive and negative parts of ones research.” (Shray Badhani, ESR 4)
Davide, Ting-Wei, Stefano, Ricarda and Maddalena presented their work in the poster sessions and attracted a lot of people.
“Presenting a poster at a conference like EGU is a great learning opportunity for any early career scientist. On one hand, I had the chance to discuss my research with people working in the same research field and to meet scientists I had only known from reading their papers. What surprised me the most, however, were the questions I got from scientists specialized in completely different fields, looking at my project from a prospective I do not usually consider. People who were just randomly walking around posters asked me the most challenging questions, highlighting issues that I never considered before, but that helped me to have a more complete understanding of what I am studying.” (Davide Mencaroni, ESR 6)
And learning new things
Apart from presenting our own work, we took the opportunity to learn more about work from outside our own fields. Alongside the traditional poster and oral presentations, EGU also hosts so called “PICO” presentations (Presenting Interative COntent) and short courses on more general topics in science.
“One thing that I really enjoyed about EGU were the PICO sessions. PICOs start with quick-fire two minute presentations from each researcher to briefly introduce their topic and state their main conclusions. After, everyone moves across to the interactive area, where each presenter has their own workstation and large screen. This really facilitates discussion and allows for more flexibility that a standard poster or talk. For me, the PICO sessions are a great way to be introduced to an unfamiliar area, because the results are presented up front and you get to see a rapid cross section of the state-of-the-art in a particular field.” (Jonathan Ford, ESR 2)
“It was a great opportunity to get some insights from overlapping, but vastly different, fields. For instance to see what the current state of research in Powder Snow Avalanches is, or to get some background knowledge on numerical modelling in turbidity currents as preparation for my secondment at NGI.” (Kate Heerema, ESR 5)
“One of the most exciting sessions I attended was on the recent tsunami events in Sulawesi and West Java (Krakatao), Indonesia (Blog). Although most of the group seemed to agree that these tsunami events were, in fact, submarine landslide-related, there was some surprisingly lively pushback from at least one seasoned researcher. I think the overall tsunami community seems to be experiencing a small paradigm shift in how they think about tsunami hazards. I also enjoyed stopping by different poster sessions related to tsunami hazards and had some great networking conversations with a group of researchers from Singapore about their work and how it relates to some tsunami survey work that I previously did as a master’s student” (William Meservy, ESR 12)
“I went to three courses, of which I especially liked the “Visualizing Science” course. I think we often forget how important it is to present our research to other scientists, as well as to the general public.” (Ricarda Gatter, ESR 9)
“The quantity and variety of soft skill courses available at the EGU undoubtedly adds value to the conference. I attended a course about communicating science with the general public and enjoyed hearing different perspectives about what effective communication looks like, and how that can take different forms. One point that stood out was the value of knowing when it is worthwhile to get the assistance of people who are trained in communication, such as journalists, to communicate significant results.” (Rachel Barrett, ESR 1)
Need help to find your way around? – use the EGU App
Finding your way around a big conference such as EGU can be difficult. Luckily, there was an app available in which you could find all the contributions and put together your personal programme. In addition, we kept everybody up to date with our own contributions via Twitter.
“I knew that EGU is the most important Geoscience conference in Europe, but I didn’t expect something like this. It was difficult not to be impressed by the amount of different topics and talks, but above all, I was struck by the hundreds of posters that everyday are hanging in these huge rooms.” (Maddalena Sammartini, ESR 15)
To sum it up
“I was honestly impressed by the EGU conference. It was the perfect environment to discuss a wide range of research topics and learn about other researchers’ PhD experiences.” (Stefano Collico, ESR 8)
“It is such a great international experience. I even met my friends from my home university in India. I am already looking forward to EGU2020.” (Shray Badhani, ESR 4)
“One of the highlights of the experience for me was that I was lucky enough to be able to bring my wife and kids along to explore Vienna. In the evenings, we were able to walk in the city together and eat a lot of goulash and Viennese chocolate cake” (William Meservy, ESR 12)
“EGU is an essential event for every geoscientist working Europe. It is the perfect opportunity to meet new people with common interests, present the latest progress of your work, get valuable feedback and to foster old friendships” (Matthias Rauter, ESR 14)
EGU – Let’s meet again
- Vienna, Austria
SLATE participants
ESRs:
- R. Barrett, ESR1 [Talk]
- J. Ford, ESR2 [Talk]
- T. Gauchery, ESR3 [Talk]
- S. Badhani, ESR4 [Talk]
- K. Heerema, ESR5 [Talk]
- D. Mencaroni, ESR6 [Poster]
- T-W Wu, ESR7 [Poster]
- S. Collico, ESR8 [Poster]
- R. Gatter, ESR9 [Poster]
- W. Meservy [Talk]
- T. Zengaffinen, ESR13 [Poster]
- M. Rauter, ESR14 [Talk]
- M. Sammartini, ESR15 [Poster]
other SLATE members:
- A. Kopf, PI of ESR7 [Poster]
- M. Clare, PI of ESR10 [PICO]
- C. Harbitz, PI of ESR13
- F. Løvholt, PI of ESR14 [Poster]
- F. Løvholt, PI of ESR14 [Convener]
- M. Strasser, PI of ESR15
- A. Georgiopoulou, Advisory Board [Talk]