The 2019 Organising Committee

(L to R) David Győrfi, Chelsea Dainton, Claudia Davidson (Chair), Lisa Pomford (Vice-chair), Dr Hannah Newman, Timothy Chukwu (missing – Maryam Mirhadizadeh)

 

The Doctoral College Conference is organised and run completely by current PGRs and ECRs and this year the committee did an incredible job sorting through over 400 abstracts to pull together a fascinating mix of oral and poster presentations for the programme.

The keynotes were particularly noteworthy with Dr Milton Mermikedes blowing everyone away on day one with a piece of experimental music that used all the conference participants names – listen to a snippet here. Prof Jim Al-Khalili took us on a journey into the quantum realm and even the PGRs who aren’t part of the Quantum Biology DTC were able to take something away from his talk.

Prof Jim Al-Khalili with PGRs from the only Quantum Biology DTC in the country, here at Surrey.

 

The wine reception followed by ‘Curry and Comedy’ in Lakeside was also a resounding success and gave Bright Club members an opportunity to warm up for the Guildford Fringe in front of a friendly crowd. Our Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, Professor David Sampson, said “budding comedians at this evening’s dinner – conferencing antics, queer quantum, bio-frustrations and potty patents…..awesome talent on display!”.

The conference was wrapped up by a panel on the PhD journey which demonstrated just how varied, challenging, but in the end truly fulfilling it is to complete a doctorate.

A huge amount of thanks goes to the committee, presenters, and guest speakers for making this conference the best yet.

If you are interested in getting involved with the conference in 2020 please contact doctoralcollege@surrey.ac.uk