Week 2: Exciting Lunches

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Sunday, June 12, 2022

By:

Matangi Melpakkam

This week, I continued to summarize bills, wrote my first bulletin draft, and attended ICSSI, or the International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation.

I attended two panels during this conference, and they were enlightening. I learned a lot about the call for open science and government funding. The best part of the conference was the lunch break in between! Lunch was provided, which was my main impetus for staying (one less meal I had to cook for myself!). However, by the end of the break, I was extra happy that I had not chosen to go to the dorm and come back. As I sat at a table with my burrata bowl, I was joined one-by-one by a public policy professor from Hong Kong, a diplomat from the Canadian embassy, a former congressman from NJ, and a co-founder of a scholarly research tool. I was incredibly excited and honored to chat with this group, and it was a huge highlight of my week.

On Thursday, we met with Nobel Physics Prize Laureate Dr. John Mather. It was very exciting to speak with him! He told me that no one can say that they accomplish anything alone, and to value my support system. Also, his favorite card game is Go Fish!

Overall, this week was exhilarating, and I also enjoyed meeting the new intern, playing jackbox.io, hitchhiking back to DC from a failed Halsey concert, visiting the monuments at midnight, going to the baseball game, seeing Rocky Horror, and going to the pride parade.

Matangi Melpakkam