by Dr. Kevin Axelrod
Back in July of this past year (which is 2024, for those of you reading this in the future), the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory of York University traveled to Pasadena, California to attend and present at the 10th Mars Conference, hosted by Cal Tech and organized by USRA. This conference is not held every year, usually just once or twice a decade and therefore had some big-shot attendees from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere. In total there were nearly a thousand participants. Given that it talks about the study of a single non-Earth planet in the universe, I considered it to be niche - something that is highly specialized, highly technical, and extremely important to some but obscure to many.
So, coming from an Earth-oriented atmospheric sciences background (I got my Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences, and my research focused on bioaerosols) at first, I found it very difficult to fit in. In just about every single conversation, (including with graduate students, who are supposedly “less experienced” than a postdoc) I found myself to be the least experienced participant. Typically, the other person did 99% of the talking, and, when responding to someone, I would just say stuff like “Okay”, “Hmm… interesting”, “I see”, “Alright, sounds good”, and “Cool”. I had difficulty contributing meaningful thoughts to conversations because I simply did not know enough.
I immediately noticed something in an opening plenary given by one of the keynote speakers, someone highly experienced that I would think of as a “big-shot.” In his presentation, he discussed a measurement technique and the missions that have performed these measurements. Then, in the question session, a member of the audience playfully ridiculed him for not including a shout-out of the Phoenix lander for a similar measurement that it had performed. He genuinely apologized, stated that he is a “big fan” of the Phoenix lander, and that its exclusion was an oversight.
Meanwhile, I sat there thinking: “Hmmm… Phoenix. To me, Phoenix is a city in Arizona, a bird in Harry Potter, and the mascot of a professional ultimate frisbee team based in Philadelphia (above).” Don’t ask me how I somehow know that third one.
This was one of many instances where I felt like I should have signed up to be the guy filling the water coolers instead of an actual presenter. Other scientists there seemed to know every single Mars mission like the back of their hand – something that I should study more. People there knew all the important (and more obscure) studies, both legacy and recent.
This made me feel like a vegetarian at my uncle Bob’s dinner table. For background, my uncle Bob loves hunting, and he butchers deer in his garage. Oh, okay, maybe “a fish out of water” would have been a more recognizable simile – Bob loves fishing too.
Niche conferences are nothing new to me: back in 2023 I attended a conference called the International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere, at Berkeley. There perhaps 150 participants (given its small size, John might call this a “workshop”, not a conference), and the title said it all. Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere was the only topic discussed. I did my Ph.D. on bioaerosols, so my research fit in perfectly with this conference, and there were many other scientists there who were also doing work on bioaerosols.
I talked with these people like we were equals: I knew what they were talking about and vice versa. But, even in a “niche” conference like this, with relatively few attendees and a narrow range of subject material, there were also several presentations that struck me as completely new – things I have not researched before, worked on, heard of, or imagined. While I vibed with a good number of presentations, there also were many presentations that were so new to me that I was completely lost by the second slide in the slide show – giving me the feeling that I was having at 10th Mars in Pasadena. Even in a conference where I have a good grasp of much of the research, there was still plenty of research that made me feel like a “newbie”.
Remembering this conference, I now realize that there may not exist a conference that is too niche. Even when narrowing down the range of topics, science is still extremely broad, and even more extremely detailed. Because of this, I find it difficult to call myself an “expert” in a broad field like atmospheric sciences, even though I have a Ph.D in this topic.
So, 10th Mars reminded me of something critical: the most important skill in a scientific career isn’t knowing everything there is to know in a field. It is the ability to push outside of your comfort zone and learn new things. Even though you may have a Ph.D, you can never stop being a student. Even though 10th Mars was perhaps a bit uncomfortable for me (because of my relative lack of experience in the field compared to other participants), I learned more material in those four days than maybe I ever had before in a four-day span.
The message of this blog post is this: I would highly recommend all early-career scientists to not just attend conferences in your field of expertise, but conferences that are slightly (or more than slightly) outside of your area of expertise. And to be honest, middle- and late-career scientists should probably be doing the same as well. It will challenge you to learn new things, meet new collaborators, and in doing so conceptualize new ideas for research that you may never have had if you had just stayed in your typical lane – the one that you were trained in when you did your M.S. or Ph.D.
A few final thoughts:
1. I need to find a way to drag some other members of the PVL out to a conference with more Earth-based atmospheric sciences! I guess the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting in Washington DC is a good place to start (three of us were there last year!).
2. “Phoenix” now includes the name of a NASA Mars lander from 2008 as a definition in my brain-dictionary!
3. Maybe it’s finally time to call uncle Bob and ask what’s up after all these years. I have recently heard that he makes a mean chaga tea. Color me intrigued.
