Research talks

The C-MORE summer course has now started in earnest and so far it has been great. The first day was mostly filled with chemical, radioactivity and lab safety training though which was not very exciting, although crucial for our lab work after the upcoming cruise.

In addition to that though, I had the privilege of listening to prof. David Karl's introductory talk of the course, which honestly was one of the most inspiring talks I've heard in a long time.
They really make us feel as a part of something bigger and we've been congratulated for being here on several occasions, especially since we are here based on our previous achievements and future potential, hand-picked from - according to Matthew Church - the year with the toughest competition and largest pool of applicants, in the course's 10 year history.
I feel really fortunate to be here.

There are plenty of opportunities to get to know both the faculty and the other participants on the course throughout the days since we so far have had many coffee breaks and also lunches and dinners together with the whole group. They even provided pizza and beer on site (nice local IPA's I might add!) after the first long day.

Today saw more lectures, but thankfully not on lab safety, by new faculty which was cool. It was all about carbon and phosphorus cycles and finally physical oceanography and loads of general information and research from station ALOHA and the HOT program (Hawaii Ocean Time-series). Station ALOHA is where we will sample during the cruise.
I'm not very big on the phosphorus cycle so it was a lot of new information, but Dave is a fantastic lecturer and still made it very fascinating.
However, it was really cool to see some of the data from the HOT program and the carbon cycle is more along my previous work. Matt also touched briefly on the subject of my current PhD project before it was time for the students research talks.

The talks were supposed to be 12 min long and should comprise of each and everyone's current research. There is a serious diversity of subjects among the participants. I don't think a single one of us 16 students even have something similar, which made the talks very enlightening and interesting.
For the first time ever, I was first out with my research talk. Of course I was very nervous before hand (as usual), but I think it went very well. I even got a few nice comments from some of the faculty when I was done. I'm very thankful of all the input my supervisor, Rachel Foster, gave me on my talk, it definitely paid off and I learned a lot.
So I can proudly claim to now have done my second official talk as a PhD student, in front of world leading scientists of my field, and with flying colors.