Annual Meeting 2016

5-12 September, 2016 in Banff, Canada

Following a one-week hiking holiday through the stunningly amazing Banff national park, we attended our first annual ArcTrain meeting after our admission as Associated PhDs. One of the most important aspects, the networking, was already covered quite successfully at the local pub in the first evening. The scientific program, entitled "Socioeconomic aspects of global changes in the arctic realm" started the next morning (6th of September). The first day was mostly dedicated to the life of the Inuit in Northern Canada and how it is affected by climate change in the Arctic. Wednesday, one of the highlights was scheduled: A hike to Burgess Shale where 500 million year old fossils can be found in vast amounts. Even for us as non-palaeontologists, this was a very interesting experience. The third day (Thursday) was dedicated to science again. Afterwards, the last three days were mostly covered by student presentations where everyone presented socioeconomic impacts of her or his research briefly. Additionally, we had some soft skill seminars.

It was very nice to meet all the other students and PIs. Although they already knew each other since almost three years, we were welcomed very openly and friendly. Learning something about the vast amount of disciplines which are represented in ArcTrain, from paleo-oceanography via ocean current and sea ice modeling to sea ice remote sensing, our own field of expertise, was a nice experience. Our research will doubtlessly benefit from this opportunity to see things in a greater perspective.
Summarizing our impressions from the first encounter with the ArcTrain community,we can say that it was a great benefit for us to join ArcTrain, both personally and scientifically.

Personal benefits
Valentin
Personally, it was encouraging for me to see that senior scientists are really interested in what I'm doing. I am developing a high-resolution sea ice concentration product comprising different methods of retrieving sea ice concentration from remote sensing data. One of my aims is to tune the product such that it can easily be used by modelers. Some of the modelers present at the meeting really showed interest in the product, which is a nice motivation to carry on with what I'm doing.
Dmitrii
As meeting in Banff was the first ArcTrain Annual Meeting for me, it was nice to meet other students and PIs both from Germany and Canada and to learn about their work. Some of them showed interest in my project. It is very motivational to know people who can use products of my work in their research. Now I am able to get feedback on what doing from modelers who might use products I am working on; discuss possible improvements and receive suggestions for new products. I'm sure acquaintance with this people will lead to productive cooperation in the future.

Dmitrii Murashkin and Valentin Ludwig