Zhou Yingying

Hi, everyone. I am Yingying Zhou.
During 22-27 July 2018, Prof. Uchiyama, Mr. Liu and I came to Kraków, Poland to attend the 17th International Conference on X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (XAFS). This Conference is organized every three years around the world. In this year, the organizers chose the 650-year-old Jagiellonian University of Kraków as the meeting place. The conference mainly focuses on recent advances in synchrotron radiation science and technology in the fields of physics, chemistry, materials science, biology and medicine.
As it is a worldwide conference, researchers are from different countries and fields. It is really a great chance to communicate with many great minds and novel ideas. During this conference, we listened a lot of wonderful talks about the applications of XAFS, like all kinds of batteries and atomic-level characterization. The diversity of these meaningful talks really enlightened us. We also shared our recent study in the conference. Mr. Liu gave brilliant oral talk named: in situ XAS study of temperature effect on the oxygen reduction reaction of Pt-Pd/C core-shell catalyst; Prof. Uchiyama and I had our posters exhibited. I really learnt a lot when communicating with other researchers during the poster time. A researcher from Canada, whose research is in situ XAS study about Sodium-oxygen batteries, had a good talk with me. We discussed our current works and exchanged our opinions pleasantly.
This trip is not only a trip of science, but also a trip of culture. In some ways they are the same: science is to discover the beauty of nature, and culture is to experience the beauty of human world. Kraków, an ancient capital of Poland, is a city of nearly 1300-year-long history. The palaces, castles, churches and museums are fascinating. We visited the National Museum, where has many masterpieces in the exhibition, like Leonardo da Vinci’s.
What can be more attractive than science and culture? Yes, the food. When we arrived Kraków, we chose a local restaurant to taste the polish food: Kielbas, which is a type of sausage originating from Poland. The Kielbas are special and delicious. Other traditional foods like polish dumplings were very impressive.
During this trip, we really enjoyed Polish culture, cuisine. What is most important, this conference is a perfect opportunity for our young researchers to hear from the masters and discuss with them our current work and results.