Before we went to the University of Wollongong Innovation Campus, I took a stroll along the beach in Wollongong. Apparently, the beaches and the surf in Wollongong are pretty well known in Australia. It is definitely rare though to find well known cities outside of the major cities in Australia. However, the east coast of Australian (and particularly the northeastern coast of mainly Queensland), is somewhat of an exception. I guess in general, Australia is a bit like Canada in that the country's land mass is enormous, but the people only live in a small area of that land. In Canada, most live near the U.S. border and in Australia, most live in the big cities or at least along the coast.The beach was pretty nice and the morning weather was pretty warm. I didn't have a lot of time, so I only was able to look around for a bit before I had to head back to the hotel to go to the conference. Lifeguards and businesses were getting setup for the day and the sunrise over the water was really cool! I wish that I would have had more time to walk around the beachfront area, but this trip didn't really allow that.
The conference started with two plenary talks by Tony Fane and Rose Amal. Prof. Fane is a huge figure in the membrane field and had actually visited Austin about a year ago. However, this was the first opportunity that I had to really meet him and speak one on one. The student talks started off pretty well and the content was really pretty good. The talks were short (12 minutes + 3 minutes for questions). So, you learned a little about what everyone was working on. I asked a few questions and accidentally ended up putting one of Dr. Kentish's students on the spot about some of the accelerated aging work that Brandon has done in our group. I talked to both Dr. Kentish and the student during the break and there weren't any hard feelings.
I sat next to Vicki Chen (who I had met with at UNSW) and all-in-all the conference experience was nice. I gave my talk after lunch and I wasn't thrilled with how I did for the first portion of the talk. I know I was rushing a bit and skipping over things I would normally say if I had more time (this was planned). So, it felt a little uncomfortable. I think it came off fine to the audience, but I would have preferred to have felt more relaxed and comfortable. I also had to use a hand-held microphone and the slide changer that they provided. This threw me off a bit since I couldn't use the slide changer that I have or my lucky laser pointer. Oh well, the talk did go well and I received a nice compliment from Tony Fane on my talk, so I'll take that as a good indicator that things went quite well.
The conference dinner was held in the evening along the beach. I sat with several of the University of Queensland students and we had a good time talking over dinner. The topics of conversation varied quite a bit, but it was nice to have conversations about non-science or engineering things. After dinner, I stuck around along with a handful of students and several professors. We stayed for quite a bit longer and it was nice to just sit around and talk with them. After we left the restaurant, Aaron, Justin (student from UQ), went to have another drink with Anita and then we all decided it would be best to get to bed so that we would be coherent for the last morning of talks.
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