April 10, 2014, by Deepa Kumari Veerasingam

Sharing from Travel Prize’s winner

Cochin to Austria via UNMC  

I find this caption perfect for a travel report because it explains my experience as an international student in UNMC who got great achievements from UNMC to travel to different places in the world for academic purposes. Before travelling to UNMC I have never expected that I can travel that soon to some of my dream places which I wished to visit in my life. For the first time, I got selected for the best poster from post graduate research event; it gave me a wonderful opportunity to visit Nottingham, UK campus and Cambridge University. It also gave me chances to travel to London which I have only seen through “Shahrukh Khan Movies” where he sings and dances before the London Bridge with gorgeous heroines. “Thank you UNMC” for that dream becoming true. The second opportunity was from Graduate school, UK campus. They offer travel prize every year for the post graduate students to attend International conferences. The selected student will get a maximum of 600 pounds for their travel purpose and the deadlines are 3 times a year. Please visit the link which is mentioned below for the details.

(http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/graduateschool/funding/currentresearchpostgraduates/travelprize.aspx)

When I got selected for the paper presentation for a conference in Austria I kept thinking of “how I am going to meet the budget?” to attend this conference.  At that time, I came to know about the graduate school travel prize offered by the UK campus. Without hesitation, I planned to try my luck. I collected all the necessary documents such as invitation letters from the conference committee, a brief report of the purpose of attending conference and the certificate of attendance from graduate school training courses I have attended over the years. You also have to get supervisor’s feedback (hopefully good) about you. I have successfully sent all these details and within one month I came to know the winning result.

Rather than going to the details of my overall experience, I would like to focus on the conference I  attended. The conference was about “WORLD SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DAYS”, it is one of the largest annual conferences in Europe, offering a unique combination of events in sustainable energy. They offer the best meeting place for all the participants from different parts of the world involved in the sustainable energy community. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to present my paper to research communities from various parts of the world. From the discussions, I  know which area I have to improve in my research and how I can bring changes in my project. The motivations I got from the invited senior personals as well as the organizers of the conference were much appreciated. It provided me a platform to communicate with research students and network with them.

Along with academic purpose, I found time to travel around the places in Austria and its nearby countries like Germany and Turkey. It was a wonderful experience to know the culture, beauty and the historic places of the countries. There were also occasions where I got to meet and interact with the local people there and tried the local cuisines and not to forget the “shopping” that is the best and unavoidable part for me.   I appreciate the graduate school for giving such great opportunities for the research students. Also would like to mention about the courses which is conducted by graduate school which helps the post graduates to bring up their skills and confidence in research presentations. I take this opportunity to thank all the staff members of graduate school for their great support for the post graduate students.

SURYA

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Posted in Postgraduate life