Sofía Baragán Montilla

The 14^th edition of the ICP was held on the begging of September (2022) in the beautiful city of Bergen (Norway). The weather was incredibly sunny and warm, allowing all members from the Paleoceanography community to enjoy the conference and the city to its fullest, I even go to see the Northern Lights for the first time.

I was able to attend this conference, thanks to a GLOMAR funding opportunity and it was a great opportunity to meet fellow researchers working on similar research topics, at the same time I got to show some of my PhD results and receive some feedback on them. General talks were held at a big conference room in Grieghallen during the mornings, mainly covering topics related to the use and development of oceanographic proxies to understand past changes in the ocean dynamics and its effects on global climate. Other areas like modelling and climate variability simulations were also included in the program.

Poster sessions were distributed in 3 groups in the afternoon of Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Although the number of posters was very high (almost 500 posters in total!), I had a chance to share my research, but also to visit other posters closely related to my area of interest, sparkling interesting conversations and gathering ideas for the next steps of my research.

In a way, the conference also served to connect with colleagues from MARUM. Even though we work in the same place, the pandemic has prevented us from properly meeting and sharing much time in-person, and in this sense the conference served as a perfect space to connect.

Evidently, I also got to meet colleagues from different institutions around Europe and create contacts. I was also personally happy to meet some colleagues from Colombia (my home country), although researchers from under-represented groups are still (in my opinion) rare to find in such a big conference. Although I was a disappointed by the lack of a specific session (or space) dedicated to equity, diversity, and inclusion, I was happy to see how some researchers from the general talks briefly voiced these issues to the whole community in ICP (virtual and in-person), sparkling the conversation in the following social events.

Overall, ICP14 was an amazing experience and opportunity for me. It was the first time I got to attend a big international conference and it was very helpful for advancing my current research and to do some networking after a long time of having no contact with other fellow researchers. At the same time, I learned a lot from the conferences and other posters, allowing me to gather new ideas to explain my data! I highly recommend attending this conference in the future for other ECR’s it is a great opportunity to show your research but also to receive feedback and connect with other colleagues from other institutions working on similar areas. Next ICP will be held at (Bangalore) India in 2025!

I want to thank GLOMAR for the funding support that allowed me to attend this conference. These opportunities are very important for early career researchers and are especially valuable for our growth as scientists.