Sophie Paul
Report of GLOMAR PhD student Sophie Paul about her participation in the 14th International Symposium on the Interaction between Sediments and Water 2017 in Taormina, Italy from 17 to 22 June 2017
From June 17th to 22nd I attended the IASWS 2017 Symposium in Taormina, Italy. The conference focuses on sediment and water interaction in fluvial, estuarine and marine systems. The conference is relatively small, with less than 100 participants. Nevertheless, there are researchers from many different fields and countries and due to the small number of participants and no parallel running sessions, it was easy to meet other researchers. There was also a relatively large number of PhD students and it was nice to network with other young scientists.
The first day of the conference mostly focused on erosion processes and sediment transport in rivers. My presentation about the “26-year Impact Assessment of Heavy Metal Distributions in Sediment and Pore Water at a Deep-Sea Nodule Mining Disturbance Site” was scheduled on the second day and in the course of the conference I heard some more interesting presentations about heavy metal contamination and remediation in various aquatic environments.
There were also some social activities throughout the conference which really brought the group together and offered great opportunities to network. On the first night, we went to a traditional Sicilian puppet theatre which was very interesting. One day I participated in an excursion to Etna, the volcano just outside of Taormina.
The IASWS conference was a great experience for me and I really enjoyed this small conference because it was much easier to meet people compared to some very large conferences I attended previously. I am grateful for funding I received from the JPI-O Mining Impact project through the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research and a student scholarship from IASWS.
Photo: Vanessa Cogliandro