Hello, Aarya here,
Like every year, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting took place from the 18th of October to the 21st of October in Cincinnati, USA this year. This was their 83rd conference and I got the opportunity to attend and present a poster at the conference. Here is a short recap of my experience at the conference.
The first day when I arrived at the conference was a pleasant, sunny day with golden light falling through the glass windows of the Duke Energy Convention Centre. Although the day seemed to be perfect, as a first-time attendee of an international conference, and being on my own, I was terrified. Therefore, the first few hours of the conference were spent being intimidated. Eventually, this intimidation decreased, but it never went away completely. Although most of the conference may have passed with me being quite nervous, I am still glad that I got the opportunity to attend and present on an international platform such as the SVP at an earlier stage of my career. I got to attend many talks based on various topics, I was able to learn about many types of projects that are ongoing in my field of interest and I got an opportunity to interact with many experts and scholars working in this field. I believe that as a student of Paleontology from India, an opportunity like this was a blessing for me. I am someone who is currently deciding what path to choose next in my academic career after my graduation and attending the conference opened my eyes to many areas of study in the field. I also got to learn about many techniques used for analysis such as stable isotope analysis, spectroscopy, DNA analysis, etc. Looking at many research projects also gave me many ideas about how to proceed and improve my project.
The Organisation of the event was perfect. There were a total of three convention rooms for talks and one big room for presenting posters. The talks and posters were divided into two different halves of the day so that I got the opportunity to attend maximum presentations and interact with many people. All of the sessions were divided based on different fields within the subject of palaeontology. For example, sessions on mammalian palaeoecology, crocodylomorphs and turtles, theropods, synapsids, etc. This organisation made it very easy for me to plan my days and I got to make the best of the given opportunity. The lunch breaks and coffee breaks were a great time to interact with other participants at the conference. For me personally, the poster sessions were the best opportunity to interact with other scholars and understand their work and their study. Activities arranged after the conference, such as the roundtable forum between postdocs and students were again another great opportunity to get to know more about many aspects of a career in paleontology. Many topics such as applications to grad school, applications for funds and grants, etc. were covered in these sessions.
To conclude, getting an opportunity to attend the SVP this year turned out to be a very important experience for my academic career. It exposed me to new ongoing research in the field of palaeontology and allowed me to interact and learn from many experts and scholars in the field. I would like to thank SVP and the Tilly Edinger Travel Grant for giving me an opportunity to attend the conference. I also look forward to attending future SVP annual meetings.