I attended the National Radio Science Meeting, colloquially known as URSI, from January 3-6 (kind of, you’ll see…), 2017 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO. It is co-sponsored by the USNC-URSI and IEEE AP-S. At this conference I presented my ongoing research on solving extreme-scale electromagnetic engineering problems. The presentation focused on a few methods that when combined could lead to a rapidly improved antenna optimization procedure. In addition to giving my talk I did a little bit of networking with some potential future colleagues, other students I’ve met, and attendees from my own university. I haven’t actually looked at any numbers, but I believe this conference probably had somewhere around 150 attendees. At a minimum it was the smallest I’ve ever attended, though not so small that graduate students weren’t welcomed.

Day 1 -- Travel and Registration

Nothing much to report today during travel. I arrived at the airport, took a direct flight on Southwest to DIA. I then took a shuttle ride through the Denver Metro area to my hotel in Boulder. Once I got checked in and got settled I wandered around Boulder. Upon realizing I was either a) lost or b) too far away from the hotel I took an Uber back to the hotel. I had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant and then began to prepare for the conference in my hotel room.

Day 2 -- Talks, early closure

I attended a few talks on this day, connected with a friend of mine from a different university, and networked a little bit as well. At around four o’clock in the afternoon all of the conference attendees were informed that campus would be closing at the end of the day due to weather, and that the evening reception was cancelled. This was quite disappointing for me as I was planning to use this reception as an opportunity to network with others in the field. I returned to the hotel. My advisor had planned that we meet together at the networking reception, but since it had been cancelled for the night we met in the hotel lobby to discuss my presentation the next day. Following this meeting I continued to work on my presentation while returning to the hotel restaurant for dinner. As I was sitting my hotel room working on preparations for my talk I noticed a little bit of white wintry stuff begin to accumulate. My initial reaction was, “Eh, it’s not too bad, this is Colorado, right?” Late in the evening we got notice that the university would be on a two-hour delay the following day, which meant that the conference organizers would be cancelling the morning plenary talk. We were also told to stay alert when we woke up in the morning because the university would need to reconsider things at that time.

Day 3 -- Cancelled and extra prep time

Conference cancelled! Well, not really, but the entire day on Thursday was. Apparently, the white wintry stuff had accumulated something around 8-12 inches, and in the interest of safety the university was shutting down for the day. I told a lot of people that I thought things might have turned out differently if classes were in session (they begin the day after MLK Day for CU-Boulder), but I didn’t really know since I don’t know what Boulder can get like in the winter. Either way, this gave me a lot more time to prepare for my conference talk, maybe too much time that I started to doubt myself… There’s really nothing exciting to say here, except that I bounced between conference preparations, getting out to the restaurant in the hotel for food (they really liked me by the end of the trip), and keeping in touch with family because I was bored. That’s it.

Day 4 -- Presentation day and travel

Finally, the day had come. I spent the morning preparing for my talk and packing up my belongings. I checked out of the hotel, left my bags with the concierge, and took an Uber (lots of snow still) the half mile to campus. I would normally walk, but in dress shoes I didn’t think it wise. Upon arrival at the university I spent some more time preparing, had lunch with classmates/colleagues, met with my advisor for last minute preparations, and read some journals that helped to motivate my talk. I then attended the session during which I would present, which was titled “Numerical Methods”. All of the talks were interesting, one was withdrawn from the conference, and I actually got the opportunity to close out the entire conference by giving the last talk in numerical methods. I gave my talk, which was a synthesis of a few methods, and answered a few questions from the audience. After the talk, I continued my discussions with a few people in the hallway. At that point, I made my way back to the hotel, took the shuttle to the airport, and went onto my next adventure.

Overall imporessions

I was a little disappointed that there was no suitable contingency plan for all of the technical talks and the opening reception. I was looking forward to doing some networking at many of the events that were cancelled. However, I think the conference organizers did the best they could given the situation, and I was able to give a better talk than I otherwise could have since I had much more time to prepare. I also enjoyed how this conference was very technical, and not very social (I know sounds contradictory). There were no corporate sponsors to be seen, and everyone you ran into was either a conference attendee or a faculty/sad PhD student of CU-Boulder. There were also more international students than I expected at this conference.