One of the best parts about being an advisor is that you get to see growth in your trainees. Not only is is satisfying to see those students succeed, but you are also reminded of the early times in your own career. There is no more reliable occasion for such moments than a masters student's first conference. This week is Izzy's turn to talk about this evergreen topic on our blog!
(Above: Izzy at the Airport. Image credit: Izzy's father)
By Isabelle Marincic
From the title, you probably have been able to deduce the topic of today’s blog post. What you may not have guessed is that I am going to recount to you in chronological order the events of my first conference during my masters degree!
Step one was getting to the airport (YYZ, Rush). My father graciously drove me to the airport for my 4:30 pm flight on September 5th, 2025. Pictured above is my father embarrassingly sending me off while he waited outside of security. Naturally, I was about 2.5 hours early for my flight.
Feeling under-packed and tired, I bought a delicious panini to tie myself over until they fed me dinner on the plane (yum!). I think I slept most of the flight to the layover location: Frankfurt. Upon arriving at the Frankfurt airport, I took the world's longest bus ride to the other side of this ginormous airport hoping I would magically arrive at my terminal. Which I did! Long story short, I accidentally gave the German government my fingerprint, and waited in a very long line for security. One final flight later, I arrived in Helsinki, Finland. Very excited to take European public transportation, I trained to the city center, and meandered my way to my hotel on foot. First impressions of Finland: grey.
Fast forward to Sunday, September 7th after Milena and Abby arrive. We took this day to peruse areas near our hotel before the conference began the following day. Abby and I guided a ship to shore, and got some steps in.
With this being my first conference attended during my masters, I was extremely excited to learn about tons of new science, to meet other scientists interested in the same things as I, and to present the work I had completed so far since arriving at York. There was an immense amount of information being relayed throughout the conference, it was so much all at once that I had trouble remembering most of it. This was a lesson for me to take notes at the next conference I attend. But, the programme included talks on terrestrial planets, outer planet systems, small bodies (comets, asteroids, etc), exoplanets, origins of planetary systems and astrobiology, and outreach, diversity, and amateur astronomy. The talks I primarily attended were those in my general field of astrobiology, along with talks given by members of my lab.
One of the highlights of the conference with regards to my professional development was the poster I presented during the Exoplanet and Astrobiology poster session. Tragically, I only attracted a single visitor to my poster. While it was slightly awkward to stand by my poster for about an hour without being able to talk about my research, I still firmly believe in the writing and presenting of poster presentations. It is a necessary segue into academic writing, which is a very difficult skill to master. I have yet to do so. So, writing short abstracts that explain your work to a relatively broad audience is good practice for advancing your academic writing skills in the long run, especially for undergraduate students.
Overall there were two lessons learned during this conference: (1) take notes, and (2) talk to more people! I was insanely nervous as this was my first time interacting with a large group of intelligent people, so it was quite intimidating. I know Abby and Elisa have no problem with this part of the job, so maybe I should ask for some tips. I personally enjoy collaborating and sharing ideas with people in my field, as I believe this helps improve my science by hashing things out-loud. Now that I am a whopping 4 more months into my degree, I think I will have more ideas to share during AbSciCon 2026 :)
Lastly, below are some images of Helsinki during the touristy part of the conference trip! Helsinki was a
very inviting and pleasant city, especially with the availability of public transit which the North American mind could not comprehend.
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