Conference duo: Insights from the E-MRS Spring Meeting

Conference report for NanoBubbles website written by Maha M. Said and Candida F. Sánchez Burmester

Strasbourg, here we come! Again. This year the European Material Research Society (E-MRS) celebrated its 40th anniversary and we did not want to miss out on the chance to be there. Last time NanoBubbles’ members were in Strasbourg was in December for the SFNano conference (and a little bit of Christmas market excitement). For this Spring E-MRS conference, 2 members of the NanoBubbles team attended: Maha Said (Post-doc, USPN) and Candida Sánchez Burmester (Ph.D. UM).

Maha presented the Replication subproject in a poster entitled ‘Nanoprobes for intracellular imaging: testing reproducibility in the nanobiosciences’. She thought it was a great opportunity to introduce this science correction-type project to young researchers who were not aware such projects existed and to meet researchers who are aware and thought this project is much needed and even gave suggestion.

Candida did ethnographic research at the conference, paying for example attention to how such a large conference with 2100 people is organized on the spot, to the way the history of the E-MRS was presented at the anniversary celebration, and to situations where people mentioned that they faced difficulties in replicating certain results. She also gained interesting insights in a workshop on ‘Entrepreneurial mindset in materials’, where representatives of new start-up companies shared their experiences and made recommendations for future entrepreneurs in the field.

Maha and Candida also attended talks across different symposiums, and had the chance to visit many of the exhibitors’ booths, namely those of academic publishing companies.

In a nutshell, it was great seeing the interest and curiosity researchers had in the project and listening to their ideas and suggestions. It was also an opportunity to listen, to talk, to observe and to learn what others in the field are working on (and to eat Tarte flambée).