How Retired Chemists Handled a Talk on Computer Modeling
Posted on May 17th, 2010 by Masha PetrovaDear Readers,
Very sorry for such a long absence from this blog! I recently came back from an ACS (American Chemical Society) speaking tour, which was a very interesting and enriching experience for me. Currently, I am working on a couple of potential book proposals as well. There might be an upcoming opportunity for you to contribute to a book on a subject related to chemical kinetics and computer modeling. So stay tuned!
This was the first time I have gone on an ACS speaking tour and it was a very interesting experience. I would recommend it to anyone looking to grow as a professional in a technical field.
This is how the volunteer speaker service works: ACS puts together a list of experts in various chemical fields who would like to volunteer to be traveling speakers. Various ACS local sections then go through the list and choose which speakers they would like to invite to a specific local meeting.
If you are one of the speakers who has selected by a particular group of local sections (a circuit), you get to travel around that area for a week and present a new talk each day in a new location. I did not realize that the more options for talk topics you provide, the more likely are the chances of various locations picking different topics 
. So I ended up giving 6 talks in 5 days on 4 different topics. My circuit covered a good portion of Wisconsin, which turns out to be a relatively large state, so I had 3- 5 hours of driving in between different locations.
In case you’re interested, here is what my schedule looked like:
Monday, April 19, 2010
Location: La Crosse, WI
Venue: University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
Topic: Economic Crisis and the Need for Computer Modeling
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Location: Milwaukee, WI
Venue: ACS Annual meeting
Topic: 10 Ways to Increase Your Value
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Location: Appleton, WI
Venue: Lawrence University
Topic: A Wife, a Mother, and a PHD
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Location: Stevens Point, WI
Venue: ACS meeting + university campus talk
Topic : A Wife, a Mother, and a PHD and Economic Crisis and the Need for Computer Modeling
Friday, April 23, 2010
Location: Houghton, MI
Topic: Importance of Perception - Why You Should Care About What Others Think
During each presentation I had a completely different audience. One day it was a large group of students. Another day it was a small mix of professors and graduate researchers. Yet another day I presented to a mixture of chemists from industry and academia.
One of my favorite audiences was in Eau Clair, where I presented the “Computer Modeling” talk to a group of retired industry chemists. Considering that half of my audience has never used a computer for so much as e-mail, it was an interesting presentation. But I have to say the retired chemists were one of the most inquisitive and interested audiences I had on this trip!
Going into the talk I had a bit of a panicky moment. Some of these people have been doing experiments in the lab for longer than two of my lifetimes. How in the world was I going to explain to them that we are on the path of moving more and more of these experiments into this teeny box called a “computer”?!
Amazingly, my audience stayed curious and interested through the whole talk. Afterwards, some of the listeners shared a few stories about how back in the day, you had to use stacks of punch cards to program just a few lines of code. Maybe because the have seen such evolution of science and technology over their lifetimes, the idea of more and more experiments being done virtually, inside of a computer did not seem surprising to them.
Now if only I can have such an open-minded audience at TurboExpo next month!
