EAG Early Career Science Ambassador Bizhou Zhu flies high at AGU2024
I feel very fortunate to have been sponsored by the EAG Early Career Science Ambassador program for my trip to the AGU Annual Meeting 2024 in Washington DC. This was the first time I had ever attended AGU, which I had anticipated to be overwhelmingly massive, but I was still amazed by the size of the conference when I arrived at the conference center. As this is the final-year of my PhD, I aimed to expand my connections with researchers based in US and around the world through attending AGU, and while also reflecting on my next steps.
The scientific program at AGU includes diverse topics, which provides a different conference experience from Goldschmidt where the topics are more specialized in geochemistry. Talking to people from broader backgrounds required me to be brave in asking questions and admitting what I don’t know. I gained inspiration and deepened understandings from conversations with people not exactly in my field, especially for the use of tools from microbiologists to facilitate the interpretation of geochemical data. This experience encouraged me to discuss and collaborate with people from different specializations.
The posters and talks in the final two days of the meeting were highly relevant and provided an opportunity to better get to know people’s research in the field. As my current project is still at the early stage, I presented a poster on the preliminary results of my incubation experiments. The poster session became very intense when I needed to present my research as well as find time to visit some interesting posters during the same session. Nevertheless, I had many good conversations with people and developed some new connections with whom I could discuss my incoming results in the future.
Attending the AGU Annual Meeting can be very expensive for people flying from Europe. Planning in advance can help save money on flights and accommodation. My colleague and I booked a really nice Airbnb thirty-minutes away from the conference center, which was much cheaper and much more spacious compared to the accommodation nearby. Taking the underground for the everyday commute was a good way to experience Washington DC. I really like the design of the underground station, which looked somewhat futuristic. I highly recommend choosing accommodation that is still within commuting distance to the conference center for an expensive conference like AGU.
Washington DC is a perfect destination for museum lovers. In my spare time, I visited the National Art Gallery, Smithsonian Museums, and Washington monument. I enjoyed my time walking around the city on some sunny days. Everything looks very clean, modern, and organized. I am very grateful to be able to visit DC with the support from EAG. This experience greatly enhanced my confidence in attending overseas conferences and networking. I believe my career will benefit from receiving diverse perspectives on my research and potential new collaborations with people I meet during the conference.
You can find a report from another EAG early career science ambassador Adam Solon who also attended AGU2024 on the EAG Blog here.
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