Where is Iris now?

Look at this:

Acceptance Letter for 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

CORRESPONDENCE AUTHOR: R.-J. K.
Abstract No: 1348
Poster Location: 624
Title: A Geophysical Mission to Venus: Result of the Alpbach Summer School 2014

We are pleased to inform you that the abstract listed above has been accepted for a POSTER PRESENTATION at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Your abstract has been scheduled in the following poster session:

Poster Session I: Planetary Mission Concepts: Venus, Io, Europa, Enceladus, and Titan, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, 6:00 p.m., Town Center Exhibit Hall

Our Hesperos mission is on a winning streak! My name will also visit the lovely Houston during this conference, as I am, once again, co-author of this poster. I am beyond excited! What's more, I am even on the official program of the conference. With MY NAME! This is so cool! Next week (or maybe even sooner) I will start writing my part of the paper about Hesperos. Awesome.

The first conference I ever attended was GeoMod from September 1, 2014 - September 5, 2014. The conference was centered around modelling in the geosciences. I had my own poster in the geodynamics session about 'The role of weak seeds in numerical modelling of continental extensional systems'. It was awesome! Not only did I learn A LOT, I also got the chance to talk to a range of interesting people. It turns out to be that conferences aren't meant as 'learning moments', but should be used as 'network opportunities'. So that is what I did. First and foremost I met Y. and R. from the ETH in Zürich. With Y. I talked about a PhD opportunity at the ETH about earthquakes and tsunami's. Not only does the topic seem to be awesome, the people with whom I would work there are also very nice, so I could definitely see myself living there.

On a different note: apparently people who talk at conferences are not necessarily the greatest speakers ever. Who would've thought? Actually they can be extremely boring speakers or speakers with the most impossible accent ever. So, yeah, it definitely is not a learning opportunity. Nevertheless, what I mainly learned from this conference is the existence of the vast amount of topics that people study: from analogue modelling of seismotectonics to volcanism to microphysical models of mineral behaviour: people use models for EVERYTHING. So cool!

Another thing I learned is that conferences are utterly exhausting. Luckily, though, I found an hour of free time before we departed again to do a bit of sightseeing. So, here is an impression of Potsdam (did I mention the conference was in Potsdam? Because it was... Potsdam, Germany. Now you know).


An impression of the beautiful campus of Potsdam. We were hosted by GFZ: their campus actually is in a forest. *wauw*


This is the beau-ti-ful building across the street from our hotel. Did I mention that I share a room with M.? Yes, even though there were 2 women and 2 men going to GeoMod from Utrecht, apparently the most convenient room layout was twice a woman + man. Right. Well. When we first got into the room, there was this majestic bed, but I soon found out they were actually 2 separate beds, so I convinced M. pretty soon to separate them..


A beautiful park next to a river in Potsdam. Lovely walking there.

( More photo's )

After sightseeing, we took the train back to The Netherlands. Little did we know that the German railway was on strike that day. Pity. So here a picture of Berlin Central Station where we spent 'siebzig' minutes waiting for our train. Pfff...