November 20, 2019
SC 2019 was great! This time, I was coming back as a second year student volunteer so I already had some experience and was much more ready for the conference. We had more people in the team this year so we were able to set up the booth in no time. This let me go around and explore a bit more than I did last year, which was really cool! It’s always nice to check out the fancy booths and see what new technologies are coming out for the next year.
This year I had a fun selection of student volunteering shifts, with the highlight being volunteering for the Fifth Computational Approaches for Cancer Workshop. The workshop was extremely insightful. As I’m going through my second school year as a graduate student, It was nice to have a sense of understanding from all that I’ve learned in the past year and it was cool to gain new insight on what the state-of-the-art approaches are for cancer and healthcare today. Another cool opportunity I took part of was the mentor-protege program. I met a great mentor from the Los Alamos lab who, although didn’t work on the same areas of research I did, was able to provide me with great career advise that I’ll look forward to as I continue researching. Most other times I spent talking to people in the UD booth. I always have a lot of fun talking about the research that we do and all the wonderful things that come from the UD campus!
One thing I really enjoy about conferences such as SC is that you get to know and bond with people in your team. It is refreshing to find that there are other groups in the same university as you that share the same or similar areas of interest as you. Usually when the semester rolls, research and courses take most of my time and I find it hard to hang out and get together. Conferences like this one makes it easier as there are a lot of events to attend after the exhibit hours are over. It’s great to socialize with people you have met before and meet new people with shared interests to build professional relationships with. Also, the free food is great! Overall, this was another successful SC and if time permits and I get the opportunity to attend SC20 in Atlanta I would be more than happy to go.
