Today was a far less interesting day (as far as my sightseeing interests were concerned). I spent pretty much the whole day in seminars for the conference. On the positive side, I learned a lot of interesting things relating to nanoscience (ICONN is a large nanoscience-based conference). I think there are a lot of good ideas that could be applied to membranes. However, I also spent time in sessions relating to the toxicity and regulation of nanoscience since I think this is an interesting area of the field.
The conference registration fee includes coffee breaks (with snacks), a catered lunch, and drinks/snacks at the evening poster sessions. From a grad student standpoint (and compared to other conferences) this is a pretty awesome spread of included food and drink. I made my way up to the poster session for snacks and drinks (while checking out some posters). I stopped by the CSIRO/U of Melbourne chick's poster and learned that she's working to functionalize some nano-bio structure. She was actually kind of rude while I was standing there (I had a genuine interest in why she was coating her particles with dopamine - since we use dopamine as an anti-fouling coating for membranes in our group). But she couldn't really answer that question and I could tell that she was trying to be rude probably to get me to leave. It's unfortunate that the most rude and person I have met in Australia ended up being an American... (okay, maybe 2nd most rude person... the guy who told me he hated American's probably wins the 1st place prize there) If there is any consolation, she did her B.S. work in chemical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (the Freeman/Paul group members will understand why that is ironic/funny).
So, after a full day of conference stuff, I'm ready to watch some Olympic coverage and get to bed. I think I'll try to head out and do a few more 'tourist' things tomorrow!
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