Science for Society

Honestly, I was more nervous with today's oral presentation than my PhD defense. It didnt help that I need to "laymanize" my research topic for a general audience. My voice got a little croaky at the beginning but i managed to calm myself down at the sight and cheers of my students who seemed to occupy a quarter of the room (shout-out to you guys!). Indeed, cheers can boost confidence.

I am so impressed with the preparations done by the Office of Research for this activity. Yesterday, each of us rehearsed our talks in front of the keynote speaker and another lady (sorry forgot the name!) who actually had been on one (as a speaker!) of those awesome TED Talks. I got good comments apart from the part where i abruptly ended my talk. I hope I remedied it at today's actual presentation. I may have done something right since Dr Bayogan (our Office of Research Director) could not help but congratulate me from the time i finished talking until the end of the activity. All in all, i had so much fun with today's activity. I realized though that I could have made my talk more "popularized" by talking about nature-inspired algorithms and omit my PhD research altogether. Well, maybe some other time. Kudos to Maiq Bonghanoy as well for being the main machinery of this event.

Pardon me for the photo above. I just noticed that it is creepy to have your photo taken with your photo.