Being in the third year of my PhD, it was imperative for me to experience an international conference as part of my professional development, and thanks to MMU and Professor Craig Banks, I was able to attend and the 12th biennial Nano conference at Moscow State University. The university, much like the rest of Moscow, is very large in size and stature, and is one of the main tourist attractions in Moscow. The impressive looking main building dominates the skyline for miles, and is situated in the centre of the campus, an approximate 15 minute walk from the nearest Metro stop, though it is easy to underestimate how long walking there can take.
I felt the conference was focussed upon delivering many high quality speakers to make the headlines. There were some indisputably good talks, but equally some not so good ones. Professor Harold Kroto’s lecture, centred around radioastronomy and the determination of carbon structures in outer space, was a particular highlight for me. Perhaps more enthralling was his general perspective on how scientific principles can be applied to the real world, where his answer was simply “[..]get rid of politicians[..]”! Professor Kroto also said that science students should be funded at source, a strategy which he thinks would inspire more creativity within students, because the current funding problems students face are capping the creativity required for scientists to successfully flourish.
There was also a very passionately delivered lecture from Professor James Tour, who caught my attention with his very simplistic graphene production strategies. His method can use practically any carbon-based raw material, including a box of cookies, dog faeces, or a cockroach leg! I was questioning such an approach when he assertively stated that a $3.50 box of cookies could be worth in the region of $15 billion; I believe that if somebody did invent a cheap strategy like this, they wouldn’t be quick to tell everybody else because you would be allowing others to make money from your work. There were some heated exchanges at the end of his lecture too, with a participant who accused Professor Tour of not doing anything new for 20 years. Incidentally, the same person attempted to lambast Professor Chad Mirkin’s work directly after Tour’s presentation. This could lead one to believe he had a personal problem with them, as Professor Tour pointed out.
There were some good poster showings at the lengthy poster sessions. The poster room was a little small, overcrowded, and ultimately hot at times; yet interested researchers were busy exchanging ideas for two and a half hours after each morning plenary session. I enjoyed explaining the fundamentals of graphene electrochemistry alongside my colleague, Dr Dale Brownson. In particular one participant was interested in our graphene production procedure as he was looking for a mass producible graphene production method, which is unfortunately some way off.
Overall I enjoyed my experiences at Nano2014, however I do feel that the conference could be have organised better, in terms of a more compacted schedule, and a particular annoyance was the fact that lunches weren’t provided throughout the entire conference, and the banquet wasn’t part of the conference fee too.