DPG Spring Meeting

Summary

The DPG (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft), department 'Environmental Physics' held its spring meeting at the University of Bremen. Hannah and Aleksei presented posters while Alexandra, Dmitrii and Valentin gave talks about their PhD topics. For all of us, it was a very valuable experience to present our work to an audience with a strong physical background, but not necessarily involved in polar research. We got valuable input and feedback and left the conference with new inspiration and motivation for our PhD projects.

Activities

The scope of the conference was very broad since several DPG departments held their joint spring meeting. Therefore we had the opportunity to inform ourselves about topics which are not covered by our PhD topics. As an example, Prof. Gerhard Bohrmann, a renowned specialist on methane hydrates gave a really interesting talk about the potential and risk of using them as an energy source. The evening talk of Prof. Justus Notholt about the usage of remote sensing data in climate research and the keynote speech of Prof. Anders Levermann about sea level rise were other highlights. For all of us, it was the first time to give a talk/show a poster at such a big conference. Despite our slight nervousness all of us presented their work successfully. The experience of talking to such a big audience and the feedback acquired during the poster session are doubtlessly very valuable for the next conferences which we will attend. All in all, we can say that we are very glad to have attended this conference and look forward to the next one.

Personal benefits

DPG Spring Meeting 2017 is the first conference I've participated under the topic of my Ph.D. project. Poster named 'Detection and variability of frontal structures in the North-West Atlantic from satellite observations', presented by me and made in co-authorship with Dr. Dagmar Kieke and Prof. Dr. Paul G. Myers was concerned about methods and first results of determination of hydrological fronts from Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Surface Heights satellite data in the above-mentioned region. I was glad to show first results of my work, get news related to my topic of interest and physics at all, to contact new people related to my branch of science and create ideas for the development of my Ph.D. project. I suppose information about scales of climatic variability and its origin learned during several reports quite interesting and prospective for me. As a conclusion, I suppose that the conference has been very useful and I would like to thank ArcTrain for the support to attend DPG Spring Meeting 2017.
Aleksei Buinyi

This was my first conference I have attended from the beginning of my PhD project. I did give a talk. I was a bit nervous and during my presentation were some technical issues ( there was a problem with an upload system, so they could not open my presentation for the couple of times), but in the end it worked out really good. I got an experience in presenting for a big audience and in managing with unexpected situations. For the next conference I will be definitely more confident and have some additional copies of my presentation with me.
Alexandra Kazlova

DPG'17 is the first conference I have taken part in. I had my first talk and despite the nerves, I have managed to present my work to the audience. I am happy with the experience I gained and I'm sure attendance of the conference improved my presentation skills. DPG is the step which will help me to prepare and give better talks in the future.
Dmitrii Murashkin

By participating in the poster session for environmental physics, I had the chance to discuss my work on the variability of the North Atlantic Current with researchers from very different fields. This did not only help me a lot in terms of being able to explain my research to an inhomogeneous audience but also to consider my ArcTrain-project within a broader context which will both be very useful for any future presentation of my work.
All in all, this meeting helped me a lot to be able to better define my own work and I would like to thank ArcTrain for the support to attend.
Hannah Nowitzki

In previous conferences I had always showed posters, so it was the first time to give a talk in front of such a big audience. Especially the tight time limit made me nervous beforehand, but my talk went very well, I managed to finish in time and answered all questions successfully. Without doubt I will be less nervous before my next talk. I also got new ideas for the work on my PhD project.
Valentin Ludwig