Friday, December 21, 2018

American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2018 [9th Dec - 15th Dec]

Hi everyone, this is Moiz, D2 student from Kawasaki Research Group. I'll be writing about my attendance at AGU2018 held at Washington D.C., one of the biggest scientific conferences for Geoscience enthusiasts, for presenting my work on 'Understanding the Reliance of Kurobe River's Cascaded Dam System on Seasonal Snowmelt Runoff using a Distributed Hydrological Model'. Kawasaki-sensei, Ralph-san, and Wei-san also participated in the conference with me.

Walter E. Washington Convention Center

Presenting my work (Photo credits: Kawasaki-sensei)


I was able to get a lot of feedback from a lot of peers, particularly those from Switzerland, Norway, and China in addition to others, most likely due to the existence of high hydropower potential in these areas. Besides my poster, there were a ton of poster presentations and oral presentations from very diverse specializations in geosciences, so there was always something to look forward to.

There were also a ton of memorials and monuments in close vicinity of the convention center, so in my free time, I could get a chance to visit some of the more famous ones such the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial among many others.

U.S. Capitol


Lincoln Memorial

Washington Monument
I was also surprised to find quite a lot of Pakistani restaurants in D.C., perhaps more than even compared to Tokyo. I could always try some food from my hometown in D.C. quite easily.

Dinner at Pakistani Restaurant

Thanks to AGU, we were also able to visit the Smithsonian Museums at nighttime (the museum are usually closed at night). These museums were huge so we could only visit 2 out the 4 museums, the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History. But I found these museums to be one of the most detailed museums I have probably ever been to.

Air and Space Museum

Museum of Natual History

All in all, it was a pretty good experience to attend AGU for the first time and meet so many peers who are also interested in the similar kind of research as me, and visiting Washington D.C. was also pretty fun.