So I'm sat in bed with a rather lovely headache as my dear wife brings me tea and medicated beverages. Of course this headache is all part of the post-conference cold I got. Yay!
So what can I say about the week (yeah long conference)? Well Regensburg is a very beautiful city, and what with the light snow we had there, even more so. The cathedral and the historical town all give it a feeling, for me, of it being much like York and Verona. I can also now say I am not a fan of Bavarian food. Far too heavy and fatty. But we did find a good bar that was not a Brauhaus, and a great little Italian cafe, and a excellent Thai restaurant.
Now for the conference, which is the German Physical Chemistry meeting. So a lot of the science focuses on surface science, material science, and the simulation of these systems with Density Functional Theory. The stand out talks for me were the one on Metal Organic Frameworks, and one on the use of big data to search for novel materials using machine learning. For the latter I got to speak to the presenter, who was very excited that I brought up the topic of Bader type analysis/Atoms in Molecules/Quantum Chemical Topology and if he was using it for his method - somehting that they have just started and something that I have a bit of knowledge on having done my PhD in one of the groups in the world which are experts on AIM/QCT.
So yeah a good conference, nice new contacts, learnt my modifications of a DFT program are now in the official version, and well a nice city to have visited.
Oh and Sam has a new lovely hair cut - this being the same hairdressers that serve us both drinks (yeah I get to sit there as she cuts a cut and a colour, it's a good time for reading a book) and they also gave me a free hair product to try out with spiking my hair.
