Chicago:

Welcome back to my grad school blog after that brief-ish interruption for the cross country drive. It's been over a week since I got back from the road trip, but I've been crazy busy since then. That week included four days in Chicago for another conference that was very interesting. Oh yeah... classes started yesterday (although I wasn't here for them...)

The brief days between trips were relatively uneventful. It is quite liberating having a car here in Ithaca, and although I won't be putting very many miles on it, I have been using it frequently. Somewhat more exciting, though, was my trip to Chicago.


The conference (which had to do with digital fabrication - my area of research) was actually part of a larger conference hinging around the opening of a Fab Lab in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (here). Fab labs are a network of labs around the world (on four continents, now...) with the goal of making high-tech computing and fabrication processes available to the general public, to let inventive minds actually make things. It's a really great idea, and I would have LOVED to have a fab lab around the corner growing up. (Fab Lab website)

The Fab Lab at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago

It was a very international conference, which is always fun. I got to chat with people from South Africa, Netherlands, India, Norway, Spain, etc. over the course of a few days. I always find it interesting to talk with people from outside our culture. And I always try to pick up something about their culture I didn't know beforehand. In all, it was a very open group, with a lot of good, healthy discussion. My presentation (to ~150 people) went smoothly and was well accepted.

Also, it couldn't have been at a more interesting location: the Museum of Science and Industry. Although not quite as breathtaking in its breadth and sheer volume of artifacts as the Deutsches Museum in Munich (See my post here), there was certainly an impressive array of exhibits. The most interesting thing was the U-505 exhibit, which started by introducing the crazy idea the US had in WWII to try and capture one of the mysterious German U-boats (submarines). It sets up the story, then BAM!. you walk out into this huge underground room with the actual U-boat-all 292 feet of it-right in front of you. It felt almost like living history, seeing such a huge chunk of it right in front of you.

German U-boat, captured by the US in WW2

A couple other interesting exhibits are shown below:















Seattle, part of a HUGE model train setup

One of the robots used in filming the Matrix

One of the main galleries with assorted planes and (visible on the ground floor toward the back) the aforementioned model train setup.

The main social even of the conference was set up right in the middle of the big museum entrance, surrounded on all side by exhibits and underneath the huge main dome. This conference must have been exceptionally well funded. The registration was free, and included three excellent catered meals a day. One would get spoiled if grad school was like this all the time!

I didn't have a lot of time to wander around other interesting areas of Chicago, but I popped over the road to the waterfront of Lake Michigan one evening. I did see a fair bit of the city on the "El" and other public transportation on my way from and to the airport. (Which took me downtown, but the only thing I recognized was the Sears Tower... which is hard to miss being the tallest building!) Overall, it was a great experience with a lot of great people who were dedicated to helping others learn about science and engineering.