How I spent my weekend by Kevin Kavanagh

For Friday through to Sunday I attended the Euroscience Open Forum 2012 (ESOF2012) which was held in the Convention Center Dublin (CCD). It is a fucking fantastic building both inside and out by the way. Such a delightful ~30 min walk from the bus stop in town too, the Docklands are looking pretty swell I must say.

Anyway, the Forum was in Dublin since Dublin is the ~City of Science~ this year. It was, essentially, LOTS of talks on incredibly interesting modern science. Modern as in there was a shit ton of CERN related stuff but also everything from genetics and genomics to climate change.

I mention these things because these were the main things that I saw. For example I attended several talks by people very deeply involved in ATLAS, LHC(b) and so forth such as Dr Stephen Myers, who is a very nice Engineer from Belfast who is also the Director of Accelerators and Technology. There were also talks by several Theoretical Physicists such as: Lisa Randall and Brian Greene who I’m sure you are all familiar with.

Aside from all of that physics I also went to some other talks. Like one on Alzheimer’s that included a short documentary on some Belgians from Antwerp with Alzheimer’s. That made me quite sad. Alzheimer’s is really horrible. 

Following that there was a more upbeat talk by Kári Stefánsson! He founded and is the CEO of deCode genetics who have compiled a genetic profile of almost the entire Icelandic population and are doing some incredible work in disease prevention and such, including breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s research! He also made a few sly comments about the Norwegian Vikings stealing all of Ireland’s beautiful women to bring them to Iceland. Gas man. 

There was another fascinating discussion on the effect of volcanic activity on global climate, thoroughly enjoyed that one. 

There were also some slightly dull talks but they were few and far between.

Overall, wonderful fun.

(Many thanks to ECO-UNESCO for giving me a badge worth €375 for free.)