#AIChEAnnual

I went to a conference and it had its own hashtag. And app. Welcome to the 21st century. I’ve been a ChemE for seven years now, and this was my first time attending the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE – most properly pronounced by spelling out A-I-C-H-E, often pronounced as “achy,” like “achy, breaky heart”). I figured I should at least go once, to experience it. Plus it was held in Orlando, Florida, this year. 

Well, after experiencing AIChE once, I can say that the best way to describe it is crazy. There are thousands of attendees, hundreds of talks and posters, and a couple dozen things going on at any given time. I’m glad I went, but it was five days of controlled madness. You can’t find anything in the program book, because it’s three hundred pages long. You can’t find anything in the app, because it’s horrible. You could search, verbatim, for the title of your talk on polymers, and the app would return talks on drug delivery, oil refining, and microfluidic devices. Even better, the app had the ability to be less helpful the more specific you were. You would search for the start of a talk and get lots of irrelevant results. To help the app out, you would then add more words . . . and get more results.

My coworker and I flew into Orlando on Saturday, in time for the opening festivities on Sunday. We spent the morning recovering from the previous day’s travel, then drove to the conference site in the afternoon. After collecting our name badges, we met up with some other lab members, ran into some Michigan people, and attended the welcome reception for the sake of free food. As a general rule, the bigger the conference, the less free food they’re likely to provide. It’s understandable, because the sheer amount of food required, and making sure everyone gets food, is a massive logistical and monetary undertaking. But as mostly destitute graduate students, at least some snacks would be appreciated.

Part of the conference center.  Poster sessions in the rooms on the left, vendors and attendees in the center, rooms for talks to the right, behind, and ahead left (out of the picture).

On Monday, the conference started in earnest. My labmates gave their talks bright and early, so we were there bright and early. Then lunch was a special event, held offsite with twenty-five years of our advisor’s graduate students. Some of his first students were there, all the way down to his current students. I’ve met former lab members before at info sessions or other conferences, but it was cool to see a bunch (there ended up being about a dozen of us) of them at once. After lunch, it was back to a somewhat random selection of talks and posters, though we did make it to a couple complex fluids talks, before the receptions that night. Most people who attend AIChE will admit that a decent percent of the reason you attend AIChE is to network and meet up with people you know. The first two nights, that’s accomplished by the receptions hosted by many of the larger universities in attendance. Basically, each university sets up in a ballroom or meeting room and gives out food and alcohol for a few hours. If you’re looking for an academic position, this is your time to go hunt down faculty; if you’re not, this is your time to wander around, eat, drink, and run into people you know.

Michigan’s reception (they had really good cake) was Monday night, but we also managed to make stops by MIT, Columbia, and UMass Amherst before calling it a night. Tuesday included more marginally tangentially related talks, plus Cornell’s reception. I saw former professors, classmates, and grad students, and got dessert, so I was pretty satisfied. The rest of the night involved crashing the Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and National University of Singapore receptions.

By Wednesday, we were tired and hungry, but the conference was only half over, and I hadn’t presented yet. We attended a lot of complex fluids talks, some of which were actually relevant to the work our lab does, before leaving at dinner time. On our way back to our lodgings, we stopped by Olive Garden, which ended up being one of the more palatable meals of the trip – i.e. not random appetizers on a plate or Americanized tourist-trap food. I managed to find the blandest item on the menu, pasta in a lemon herb sauce with grilled chicken. No cheese, no tomato sauce, nothing fried, and it even included vegetables.

Late afternoon outside the conference center

Finally, I presented on Thursday. In the afternoon. We attended a few talks earlier in the day before I reported to my session, heard about some projects involving similar systems to the one I work with, and gave my presentation. Being late in the day and late in the conference, you’re mainly just grateful anyone besides the session chair is there. And so we were done with any and all obligations at AIChE. We celebrated with Shake Shack.

After attending AIChE, I will say I’m glad I went, but it was a long week. Though there are constantly things going on, it’s hard to find the things that are most relevant to your research. Besides the actual content of the conference, the location was not the best. The conference center itself was fine, but the only places to get food inside it were the price-gouging hotel-owned restaurants/coffeeshops. Outside the conference center, it was tourist-trap central. All the restaurants were either places you’d take your date/business clients or bars/nightclubs. There wasn’t anywhere you could easily just get a piece of fruit, or a sandwich that wasn’t either grilled or soggy. And I’ll say it again, the app sucked. But I got to hang out with lab people, Michigan people, Cornell people, and other assorted friends, so I guess it was worth it.

Big Red Hockey

For the first time since graduation, I saw my favorite hockey team play live. It started when I got the Michigan athletics email offering staff discounts on select (i.e. out of conference, not popular) Michigan hockey games. That made me think about Cornell hockey, so I went to look up the team and see what they would be up to this season. In the back of my mind, I was wondering if any of the games in New England would be near when I was going home for Christmas, or if there was any way I could structure my break to see a Cornell hockey game. Instead, what I found out was that Cornell men’s hockey was coming to East Lansing, Michigan, to play Michigan State. East Lansing is a mere hour’s drive from Ann Arbor. 

One of my friends, a fellow Cornell graduate, didn’t take any convincing to agree that we should go to the game. I bought the tickets, we dragged along another friend (who had never seen a hockey game before), and headed out for Lansing on a Friday evening. Munn Ice Arena is the sixth hockey arena I’ve been to, after Lynah Rink (Cornell), Madison Square Garden, Thompson Arena (Dartmouth), the Bright-Landry Hockey Center (aka Lynah east) (Harvard), and Yost Ice Arena (Michigan). It was a lot like most of the other rinks I’ve visited – lots of plastic and metal, video screen, weird prize games during the period breaks. The band was pretty good though. They at least looked like they were having more fun than the Michigan hockey band, and I strongly approve of their second period break set – “Everybody’s Everything” (Santana, 1971), and “Sell Out” (Reel Big Fish, 2010). Nothing like some classic rock and ska to go with your hockey. And I played both of those songs regularly with the Cornell pep band, so I was happy to hear them.

Cornell hockey!

I was also happy with the final score. Based on the rankings, odds were that Cornell would probably win, but they were on the road for their first weekend of NCAA-counted play, versus MSU’s second or third. The rankings carrying over from the previous season also sometimes don’t mean that much, depending on the amount of team turnover from graduation. All of that is to say that Cornell started very shakily. The whole team kept giving up the puck directly in front of their own goal, they couldn’t pass out of their own half, and when they were in MSU’s half, they weren’t getting shots off.

End of game.  Final score: Cornell 3, MSU 2.

Shortly after the start of the game, MSU went on the power play, and before Cornell could get organized, scored. They got a goal back, also on the power play, to go into the first period break tied. In the second period, Cornell started looking a little better, but their penalty kill unit still looked questionable, and MSU scored on a 4-on-3 power play. Again, they managed to tie the game, this time by a lot of hacking and bashing in front of the net that somehow ended with the puck sneaking over the line. The next goal of the game came on another Cornell power play near the end of the second period. With that, Cornell went into the third period up a goal and had twenty minutes to either hold on to their lead or extend it. They didn’t score again that night, but neither did MSU, so they got the 3-2 win. During the rematch the next night, they picked up the scoring (final score, 6-2), leaving Michigan with a pair of wins and an encouraging start to the season. I can’t say Cornell ever looked great at their game Friday night, but they looked better as the night went on. The defense got themselves sorted out and the offence started to string passes together. Their goals were of the “puck is in the net” variety rather than the “great play/shot” kind, but in the end what matters is the number of goals, not the quality. They got the job done, and I got to see them do it. Until next time. Let’s go red.

Fall at the Arboretum

My latest quest was to find fall colors at the Arboretum, but it’s not like I really need excuses to go stomping through the mud. While the weather was still considered tolerable (and downright nice some weeks) by the majority of Ann Arbor, I took to wandering through the Arboretum after church on Sundays. I wasn’t expecting much, because unlike New England, Ann Arbor lacks 1) hills, so you don’t get good views of expanses of trees, and 2) maple trees, which affects the yellow/red color balance. Yes, it is possible to be persnickety about fall colors. Nevertheless, it still looked nice in Ann Arbor, just not as spectacular as miles of rolling hills covered in yellow, orange, and red.

A fall colored tree

Early in the season, there wasn’t much, just some isolated branches and tips of trees. After a couple weeks, I found a whole tree. This was one of the days when it was too nice to not be outside, though, so it was still worth being at the Arboretum, and the very tall grass was still there. A few weeks later, we hit what was probably peak color. I had a concert the week after that, and then was heading out of town the following week, so it was definitely the peak color that I saw. The more forested trails were covered in leaves, and a lot of the beeches/elms/sycamores/whatever were nice and yellow.

Fall-ish trails

View from the overlook

And then I went away for a week and came back to snow. Six months of winter, here we come.

Fall Flavors

Another month, another visit to Greenfield Village. This time, one of my college friends was visiting home, and I joined her and her parents for Fall Flavor Weekends at Greenfield Village. It was a cool, cloudy day, but I was still surprised by how uncrowded it was, not that I was complaining. I guess Fall Flavor Weekends aren’t a huge deal compared to some of their separately ticketed events, but I enjoyed it. Mostly things go on in the village as usual, except with more cooking and demonstrations.

When we arrived, we first headed in the direction of the farm, where they were threshing, and later baling, wheat. The thresher was powered by a steam engine that would have made the rounds to each farm as needed and also periodically let out giant plumes of smoke. From there, we visited the mid-19th century Firestone Farm, home to Harvey Firestone, the tire guy. He was friends with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, and apparently the three of them would sometimes go vacationing together. At the farm, they were in the middle of lunch (featuring cabbage, squash, and a bread or cake?), and were making apple butter in the basement.

Threshing wheat

We next briefly looked around the Liberty Craftworks area, but it was mostly business as usual for them, though the print shop did print up some recipes for ham. On our way to lunch, we walked through the farmer’s market set up in the pavilion, which I had never seen open before then. For lunch, I got pork and beans with cornbread at A Taste of History, and it was delicious. I still really appreciate that their food tastes like food and not salt and oil.

Barns by the craft shops

After lunch, we wandered through the rest of the houses that were cooking. McGuffey’s birthplace (~1800, Pennsylvania) was making rabbit stew and some sort of English pudding that gets boiled. The Mattox family home (~1930, Georgia) had crackling bread and peach cobbler. Outside near these two houses, they were also making cheese and butter, plus baking apple pies (three of them, cooked in three slightly different ways – how do I get a job that involves more pies?) on an open fire. Then at the Edison homestead (~1915, Canada – this was Edison’s grandparents’ house that Edison would visit) they were having ham, a grape/celery/mayonnaise salad, and something else involving rolled fried spinach. The Susquehanna plantation (~1860, Maryland) was cooking crab cakes and biscuits, and finally, the Daggett farmhouse (~1760, Connecticut) was cleaning up by the time we got there, and had just finished brewing a batch of beer. We learned about some of the different things they used to flavor the beer, and the grains that were cooked into a mash and could be eaten as a sort of breakfast cereal before fermentation.

Overall, I liked the event; it was a different look at the houses in Greenfield Village and they kept it pretty low key. No crowds, a bit of behind the scenes, and food. What more could I ask for?

But wait, there’s more. The last fall flavor is mine. I had been watching The Great British Bake Off again and decided what I really needed to do was bake a cake. Specifically a nice complicated upside down apple cider cake that involved cooking apple slices in cider, melting butter and sugar to caramelize, arranging a layer of apples on the bottom of the pan, baking a spice cake (from scratch) over the apples, and turning the whole thing upside down. It’s a bit of a pain, but worth it in the end, because it’s not like I have better things to do with my time. (Research? What research?)

Upside down apple cider cake

Birthday Hockey

Part of my birthday celebrations this year included hockey, because after four years in pep band and dozens of hockey games, the sport grew on me. It was only the second time I’ve ever paid to go to a hockey game, but I did get a slight staff/faculty discount. One of the few perks of being a grad student is that we’re considered both students and staff, so we get all the discounts.

The reason I chose this game was not just because of the discount tickets, but because Clarkson was coming to Michigan. Clarkson, like Cornell, plays in ECAC hockey, and finished directly behind Cornell in the standings last year, so I figured I’d watch some conference friends(?) and get an early indication of how the ECAC season might shape up. With that in mind, I headed to Yost Ice Arena on a cool fall Friday night. Yost Arena is probably nicer than Cornell’s Lynah Rink, but I like Lynah and its wooden benches, low rafters, and no video replay screen. Yost, like a lot of things about Michigan, is almost too polished. Life is messy. It has rough edges. It’s not all shiny and sparkling chrome and glass. But Michigan hockey is better than no hockey at all, so I forked over my money and entered the high-ceilinged, aluminum-clad arena.

Near the end of the third period, tie game

It was early in the season, which usually means teams are still getting back on their skates, so to speak. This game was no exception, with players falling and more crossed signals than typical. Clarkson ended up scoring near the end of the first period on a power play, then conceded an even-strength goal midway through the second period, and that concluded the scoring for that game. ECAC plays a single five-minute sudden death overtime period during the regular season. If no team scores during overtime, the game ends as a tie, which is what happened on this night. Apparently for Big Ten conference games, the tie stands for NCAA records, but after the first overtime, they play a second five-minute sudden death overtime, except 3-on-3, and if the game is still tied after that, there’s a shootout and the winner receives an extra point in the Big Ten standings. For this out of conference matchup, however, the game ended as a 1-1 draw after a single overtime.

Third period, student section and hockey band in the background

There was a rematch the following night, and Clarkson came away with the win, which is what I would have expected. Michigan had home ice, but Clarkson (and Cornell) started the season ranked pretty highly. Overall, neither team was particularly inspiring, but Clarkson’s defense looked more organized, and though their offense wasn’t as active as Michigan’s, they had more dangerous fast breaks. All said, it wasn’t a bad game to watch. I brought my DSLR and experimented with shutter speeds, and I got to see what might be my favorite penalty¹ – too many men on the ice.

¹Hockey penalties are great. While most cards in soccer are for “unsportsmanlike conduct,” in hockey you get penalties like boarding, hooking, slashing, cross-checking, charging, high-sticking, holding, holding the stick, elbowing, interference, roughing, tripping, and playing with a broken stick. And of course, too many men on the ice.