Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Grant Report – Philip Pearcy

I applied for the following travel grant in order to allow me to attend a joint group meeting in Edinburgh for the EPSRC New Directions in Molecular Scattering (NDMS) Programme Grant. This is a joint programme between the University of Oxford and Heriot-Watt University. This was the first time that the members met since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so it was important for us to be there to learn about what the groups in Oxford and Heriot-Watt have been doing.

As part of the two-day event, the principle investigators (PIs) gave talks on the research that has been conducted so far before we conducted a discussion session on what more can be done. In addition, we all had a tour of the laser spectroscopy laboratories at Heriot-Wat. Following this, postgraduate and postdoctoral students presented posters on their work which allowed PIs and other group members to speak with us and robustly share their ideas on what we can do to improve our experiments. It was very useful for myself and other members of our group as it gave us new ideas for our own research. Furthermore, being able to meet the other postgraduate students for the first time and socialise with them in Edinburgh was really beneficial as we got to make new connections which will very useful in the future.

In order to attend the event, I arranged to take the East Coast Mainline train from Oxford to Edinburgh Waverley on 2nd September, before coming back on 4th September. The organisers of the group meeting at Heriot-Watt arranged for us to stay at a hotel on the main campus in Edinburgh. Thanks to the Old Members’ Trust travel grant, I was able to pay for the travel, accommodation and the lunch that was provided during the meeting. I am very grateful for this and I pass my thanks to those who funded the grant.

Find out more about the range of travel grants and scholarships available to assist Univ students on our Travel Grants page or read further travel reports.

Published: 20 January 2022

Explore Univ on social media