Yusuf Awaluddin

Thanks to GLOMAR for the financial support which allowed me to participate in the annual European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly held from the 17th to 22nd of April 2016 in Vienna, Austria (http://www.egu2016.eu/).  More than 13,000 scientists from 109 countries participated in the biggest event for geoscience conference in Europe. There were three different types of presentations in EGU: oral, ‘classical’ poster, and PICO presentation. The PICO is a type of digital and interactive poster presentation with a 2-minutes talk at the beginning, followed by a digital poster presentation. During the conference, various scientific topics were covered, such as geophysics, climate change, geomorphology, planetary science and much more.

At first, it was a bit difficult to manage the time to find and to attend interesting sessions. Fortunately, the mobile application was provided by EGU, which helped me a lot navigate my direction to choose related and interested sessions. I preferred using this mobile application rather than traditional conference books. It was very handy and user-friendly.

Taking part in the biggest geoscience conference in Europe was a great experience. It gave me an invaluable opportunity to present my work to a broad audience. My conference contribution, a poster entitled “Hydroclimate variability in the western Pacific warm pool during 60,000 years”, was presented on the third day of the conference, in the Open Session Climate: past, present and future. The poster presented recent results of my research. It raised attention from some paleo-modelling and other proxy scientists. Thus, I received several valuable comments and obtained follow-up supports regarding my current results afterward.

In general, I greatly benefited from this conference. I enjoyed the Climate “CL“ sessions, workshops, early career scientist session, medal lecture and benthic foraminifera session. The exhibition during the conference was also exciting. I have some tips based on my experience; if you get bored with the science sessions, just go to the GeoCinema in which you can watch some movies with the perspective of science or you can attend the workshop on how to film your research. During lunch time, you can also bring your own lunch with your new friends to the lovely Donaupark, which is located nearby the conference venue. Finally, I would recommend this conference to other GLOMAR students who are interested in presenting their work to the geoscience-related community.