Old Members’ Trust Travel Report – Dan Spencer
9-13 December 2019, San Francisco

In December 2019 I attended the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, California. AGU is the largest geophysics conference in the world, attracting over 30,000 attendees. Particularly important for me, AGU is one of the two primary annual meetings of planetary scientists; AGU thus provides me with an excellent opportunity to present the work I have been doing in my DPhil.

At the conference I was presenting a poster entitled ‘Magmatic segregation and volcanism on Io’. This poster showcased the work that I have been doing in the first year and a half of my DPhil. This work will form the first chapter of my thesis and the primary groundwork on which subsequent chapters are being built. Given that this work is such an important component of my thesis, it was vitally important that I received feedback form world-leading academics. I got in contact with many of the prominent academics in my field who were at the conference requested that they attend my poster.

My poster was very well attended with a large number of people talking to me about my work and asking questions. My work seemed to be very well received with a lot of people asking when I will be writing up the work into a paper (something that I am currently doing). Various notable planetary scientists indicated that they felt this work was important and timely, as well as providing useful feedback on both my presentation skills, poster, and the academic work I was presenting.

As well as presenting my own work, I spent the week attending many different sessions and hearing about the interesting work that is being done both in my field and in other fields. This gave me the opportunity to think about some interesting potential future projects as I look towards the possibility of a postdoc.

I also arranged various meeting with academics who I have an interest in collaborating with. These meetings were great opportunities to get my name out there as I consider a career in academia.

Attending conferences like AGU is a vitally important part of my progression as a scientist, and I am extremely grateful to University College and the Old Members’ Trust for contributing to my ability to attend.

Find out more about the range of travel grants and scholarships available to assist Univ students on our Travel Grants page or read further travel reports.

Published: 18 February 2020

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