Yup, that's us - the UK delegation to ICWIP 2008. That's me in the middle with the long hair trying desperately to not drop my slipping notebook on anyone...
This morning kicked off with two fascinating presentations. The first was on teaching physics at tertiary level by Pratibha Jolly of India. The main idea I got out of that talk was that physics can't really be taught, but it can be learned, and that lecturing doesn't give students the physical intuition and understanding that doing simple experiments can. Also, there's strong reason for believing that student who get good marks are doing so by playing the system, rather than understanding the curriculum (to be fair, I did the same myself when I was in school).
The second plenary talk of the day (given by Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann from Brasil) was on super-massive black holes and their effects on galaxy formation. Did you know that if the Earth was to become a black hole it'd have to be squashed to 9mm in diameter?
(I've got shed-loads of notes to sort out and put some form of sense on from all the talks - but it's been exhilarating, hearing about all sorts of cool physics, and all done by women too!)
I went to a session in strand C after the plenary talks this morning, discussing how to improve the general working environment for women in physics. (My male colleagues will be pleased to hear that it improves things for men too). There were some really interesting surveys presented from India and South Africa, which were very telling about preconceptions about physics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of female entrants into a physics course in India was directly related to the amount of outreach activities that had been done the year before.
It was my turn to present after lunch, my poster on how rain field modeling is used for radio communications. I wound up commiserating with a radio astronomer about how difficult it can be to keep radio noise out of one's measurements, and the general state of radio spectrum management today (one of my pet rants).
I rounded the day off with a personal development workshop on transitioning to a leadership position. I think I was a bit of a disruptive influence, as when I was asked to think of what award I'd like to win, the only ones I could think of were the IgNobels... dearie me...
Still, it was interesting, using different ways of determining where it is I actually want to take my career, and it's definitely given me food for thought.
Conference banquet tonight, and some of the UK delegation are threatening to find a karaoke bar.... I think I'll join them. It is a very important part of Korean culture after all...
