By Ana Arama (ana.arama@pgr.reading.ac.uk), Jake Keller (j.p.keller@pgr.reading.ac.uk), Ken Rui Fong (kenrui.fong@pgr.reading.ac.uk) and Maia Arama (m.arama@pgr.reading.ac.uk)
Introduction
Attending conferences and workshops is an essential part of every academic’s life (and perhaps non-academics as well, since some of us will one day leave academia!), and therefore it is only natural that us PhD students get to go as well. In this blog Maia, Jake, Ken and Ana tell us about their experiences of attending some of these scholarly gatherings this year.
Editors’ tip for first-years: though most of these opportunities are communicated to you by your supervisors, research groups or PhD admin, it is good to keep an eye out yourself for conferences that may have skipped their radar. Following key organizations on LinkedIn is always helpful for that. In fact, that is where Ana found out about the energy modelling workshop!
Maia Arama – RMetS Early Career and Student Conference
At the beginning of July, I attended the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) Early Career and Student Conference. This 3-day conference is designed for early career researchers, undergraduates, master’s and PhD students. The conference location changes every year; this time it was held at the University of Exeter.
The programme opened with a relaxed social (drinks and pizza) on Sunday. Based on my experience, I highly recommend going to pre-conference socials. I felt this was the ideal way to meet other conference delegates which made walking into the first full day of the conference less intimidating.
Over the following two and a half days, I attended a series of 15-minute talks covering themes relating to weather and climate extremes, atmospheric chemistry, climate impacts, and machine learning. Poster sessions were in the late afternoon on the first two days. I found that presenting my research as a poster was great practice for learning how to build a story for my research and defending my methodological choices – both useful skills to have in the lead-up to the monitoring committee meetings we have here at Reading!
The conference also included a workshop on storytelling for researchers and a panel on science communication, both good reminders that research isn’t just about the work itself but also how we communicate it. Frequent coffee breaks provided ample opportunity for networking and socialising, and a vegan/vegetarian BBQ and quiz on the first day were also a lot of fun.
Overall, I had a genuinely positive experience at this conference. Hearing everyone’s talks and discussing their posters was truly inspiring. As a PhD student, one unexpected highlight was connecting with other PhD students outside of the University of Reading. Being reminded that we all share the same struggles relating to data processing, setbacks and navigating PhD milestones despite different research areas was reassuring!
The conference environment was very relaxed and friendly, so I would highly recommend attending this conference if it’s your first time presenting or if you want something a bit less intimidating than the RMetS Annual Weather and Climate Conference!
More details about the conference can be found here: https://www.rmets.org/conference/early-career-and-student-conference-2026
Jake Keller- Diabatic Processes Workshop
This spring, I attended the Diabatic Processes Workshop in Wolkersdorf, Austria. The workshop brought together around 70 researchers from a wide range of universities and included both senior scientists and early-career researchers, such as me.
The programme was structured into seven presentation sessions over four days, covering topics such as jets, cyclones, predictability, convection, and more. In addition, two poster sessions showcased a broad range of research related to diabatic processes. I presented some of my relevant work in the predictability session, and I even had the opportunity to co-convene a session. The workshop concluded with group discussions, where participants considered the future direction of the field, focusing on what researchers can do next and identifying the data needed to advance our understanding.
Mealtimes were particularly valuable for informal discussions, allowing me to connect with researchers whose papers I had previously read and to ask them questions about their work. Regular coffee breaks also provided opportunities to follow up on presentations while they were still fresh in my mind!
Beyond the scientific content, the workshop provided an excellent opportunity to gain insight into the diverse topics currently being explored within an already specialised research area. Smaller, focused workshops like this also offer valuable opportunities for networking and make it easier to have more meaningful and extended conversations with other scientists.
Since the workshop, I have continued discussions with researchers conducting similar modelling experiments, and we are now sharing updates on our progress and results. I have also had the opportunity to speak with a visiting scientist who attended the workshop, discussing one of his papers that closely relates to my research.
In addition to building connections, these smaller workshops are highly rewarding. They create a strong sense of contributing to and advancing the field, something that isn’t always easy to feel during every stage of a PhD. I would highly recommend this type of workshop to other early-career researchers.
Further information on the workshop can be found here: https://diabatics2026.w.uib.no/
Ken Rui Fong- ParaChute Conference
I attended the ParaChute (“Understanding turbulence and convective processes”) conference held in Reading in July this year. The conference attracted many attendees from a wide range of universities and modelling centres from all over the globe, working across theory, modelling and observations. The conference talks were divided into seven themes across five days, touching on various aspects of convection & turbulence, such as grey-zone parametrization, observing systems and microphysics-turbulence coupling. I personally got to present a poster on my PhD project on grey-zone convection parametrization and benefited greatly from interesting discussions with other senior researchers working on modelling and convection.
Despite the range of topics and different disciplinary approaches, I found nearly all the sessions interesting and relevant because they are underpinned by the ‘grand challenge’ of convection & turbulence parametrization in high-resolution models. I also found it enlightening to hear from researchers from modelling centres talk about their experiences and challenges faced in deploying operational km-scale models and performing forecast verification at convective scales – it was a sobering reminder that many things still have to be done downstream of model development before we might see any gains realized.
Apart from the talks and poster sessions, the committee had organized social events on Wednesday afternoon, and we were given a choice of a tour of the university’s atmospheric observatory, or an orienteering course around the campus. I opted for the former since it would be my first time touring the observatory. The conference capped off with a panel discussion on Friday summarizing contributions from group discussions earlier in the week about the future of modelling and observing systems for convection and turbulence. All in all, I had an interesting time at the ParaChute conference, and hopefully I’ll be able to attend many more like it in the future!
Further information about the Parachute conference can be found at https://research.reading.ac.uk/parachute/.
PyPSA Energy Modelling Workshop, Ana Arama
This September, I attended the PyPSA Workshop held at the University of Birmingham. PyPSA stands for Python for Power System Analysis, and is a free, open-source modelling tool used to simulate and optimise energy systems.
The workshop lasted two days and featured a combination of lectures on PyPSA’s key features and hands-on examples demonstrating how to model different aspects of the energy system. There were five Jupyter notebooks which we could work through, each one focusing on a different aspect of PyPSA. They ranged from basic use cases of the tool to more advanced topics, such as incorporating uncertainty using stochastic modelling and security of electricity supply analysis under different scenarios, like gas price shocks. I particularly enjoyed learning how to use the stochastic modelling feature of PyPSA, since this is a feature that has only recently been added to the toolbox. It was a good way for me to see how uncertainty could be incorporated in energy modelling analysis.
Overall, the workshop was a good opportunity to learn more about the capabilities of PyPSA, and I think it was a good step towards increasing my energy modelling skills. I also found the environment of the workshop to be very relaxed, with plenty of time to ask questions about the various topics covered.
I would recommend this course to anyone who is fairly new to energy modelling and wants to gain a better understanding of how energy modelling tools can aid in power system planning as well as power system design under uncertainty. Although the course provides an introduction to PyPSA, I think it would be helpful to have some prior basic knowledge on terminology used in energy system modelling. I would also recommend doing some of the online examples on the PyPSA website to gain familiarity with the tool before attending the workshop.
The resources from the workshop can be found here: GitHub – pypsalabs/workshop-202609: Workshop materials for energy system modelling with PyPSA, Birmingham, September 2026. · GitHub
