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In March 2013 the final year CDT students packed their bags for the Baltimore city convention centre for the world's largest physics conference.

Towards the end of March, 2013, the final year CDT students packed their bags for the Baltimore city convention centre, where the world's largest physics conference was to be held. This year, the APS March meeting boasted an attendance of around 10,000 people, covering all areas of atomic, molecular and condensed matter physics, as well as parts of physical chemistry and biology. Every person who submitted an abstract for a talk got a chance to present their work, usually in focus sessions, which packed in around fifteen 12 minute talks in one block and home in on a specialised topic, or during poster sessions. This gave audience members a taster of what state of the art research was in a particular area. Longer talks were presented by more experienced and successful scientists, these were aimed at a broader audience so that, for example, a quantum information PhD student could go and listen to a research-level talk about the use of nanotechnology in the body to fight diseases. There were many, many talks running in parallel all day long, so everyone was constantly rushing around trying to get from one room to another, carrying the giant conference catalogue, which resembled the yellow pages in its size. In the evenings there were organised events also, the most entertaining being the physics “sing along”, where a local band (composed of physicists) performed their takes on old hits such as Lola by The Kinks, but with modified lyrics (in the case of Lola it was Nano...) and the crowd, armed with lyric sheets, were encouraged to sing along, fuelled by free beer and their unbounded love of physics.

The conference was optimised for networking: it was impossible not to bump into someone you've always wanted to meet due to the sheer number of people, and then there were also “lunches with the experts” where students were invited on a first come-first serve basis to attend a lunch with a big shot in their field, for us it was John Preskill. In addition, a lot of people from industry were present, either marketing their products or looking to recruit scientists. And the grand finale of it all was a lecture given by the two most recent Nobel prize winners, which was a rare opportunity we were lucky enough to experience. Of course, this was all followed by free wine and food, another exciting and unmissable opportunity.

On our last day in Baltimore we decided to take a trip Washington DC by train. It was brilliant to have the chance to view America's most noted landmarks, and this is actually where the photo was taken, when we were all sitting on a wall near the Lincoln memorial!

All in all the March meeting was an invaluable experience for all of us, especially at a time when we are all thinking about the next step in our careers, and what made it more special was the chance for us all to reunite and bond as a group again, after having spent a few years apart pursuing our individual research interests, and it was really as if we'd never been apart at all.

Sania Jevtic, CQD CDT Cohort 1