I’m thankful for support from the WIC Professional Development Grant which allowed me to attend the 2019 International Conference on Photochemistry in Boulder, CO. The content of this conference spanned a broad range of photophysical and photochemical communities, with several sessions devoted to both ultrafast photophysical phenomena and photoredox catalysis, thus aligning well with my research interests. I presented a poster titled, “Enhancing transition metal photocatalytic efficiency with natural light-harvesting systems”, detailing my work on generation and photophysical characterization of biohybrid photocatalysts comprised of ruthenium polypyridyl complexes bound to red algae derived light-harvesting proteins. Given the breadth of this conference, I was able to disseminate these results within the context of both the spectroscopy and photoredox catalysis communities, which was critical to receiving useful feedback from other attendees and gleaning insight into potential new directions for this project.
In addition to an extensive number of talks within my area of research, this conference also afforded me the opportunity meet other PIs, post-docs, and graduate students in my field. This not only allowed for excellent scientific discussion, but also served to bring to my attention other scientific directions and career options I could pursue following graduate school. This conference also served as the all hands meeting for a large collaboration with Princeton and other universities associated with my photocatalysis work, and was thus an excellent opportunity to meet with collaborators and furtherdiscuss the scope of our research goals. While in Colorado I also spent a day climbing Mt. Massive, the second tallest mountain in the central Rockies.
Overall the International Conference on Photochemistry was an excellent first conference as a graduate student owing to its scope and size, and I am very grateful for WIC’s support of my attendance.
