The London Centre for Nanotechnology recognises the importance of presenting research papers or posters at conferences. To facilitate this, LCN@KCL has established a fund to assist postgraduate students in attending conferences. The initiative aims to provide greater access to significant academic and professional development opportunities, ultimately contributing to a more diverse and thriving academic community.
Chenlei Gu is a recipient of a joint LCN Studentship supervised by Dr Ciro Chiappini at King’s and Dr Michael Thomas at UCL. His collaborative project is developing minimally-invasive intracellular sensing approaches for spatial biology.
The fund paid for part of his travel to give an oral presentation entitled ‘Engineering a nanobiopsy platform for non-destructive biosensing in tissue’ at the 2023 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit in San Francisco in April 2023.
Chenlei’s post-conference blog is below:
The 2023 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibition is the world’s leading international scientific gathering for material researchers. To celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, it featured over 50 symposiums and approximately 6000 attendees participated from all around the world. I was able to learn and consolidate both fundamental principles and applied areas of my study in such a multidisciplinary meeting. In addition, I also gained valuable insight that will allow me to refine my work on developing health-related technologies and methods to benefit the whole community. The micro- and nanofabrication training and hands-on experience in the London Centre for Nanotechnology have equipped me with all the necessary tools to perform my work – from exchanging technical information about materials, to brainstorming their broader applications in the biomedical field.
As an oral presenter, I introduced my current project and ideas towards the hot topics and pressing challenges in the current biomedical field that we want to contribute to. My presentation received valuable constructive feedback during both the Q&A afterwards, as well as during the break of the session. By listening and proposing questions to the invited speakers from my relevant subject of interest, I was not only immersed in their elegant and rigorous research, but also witnessed their academic passion and pursuit of excellence. In addition, being a symposium assistant provides me with a fantastic opportunity for networking and improving my soft skills, and the large-scale exhibits add to the overall interactive experience to gather information to drive innovation. Notably, my supervisor and I had also identified possible collaborations during the conference, which are currently under discussion.
Overall, I felt extremely fortunate and invigorated to engage 100% in the MRS conference this year; such an in-person experience was impressively priceless both for me personally, and the research I am conducting.
Chenlei Gu
25th April, 2023
PhD students at King’s who are interested in applying for the LCN@KCL PhD Travel Fund should email [email protected]@kcl.ac.uk
