The National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in the USA is a yearly run conference aimed to promote research conducted by undergraduate students. The 25th NCUR was held at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York State from March 31st to April 4th 2011 and I was fortunate enough to attend. There was approximately 4000 presentations given by undergraduates and I was given the opportunity to present two. The first was an oral presentation of the research carried out in the Computational Physics Group; titled “Computer Modelling of Soft-Nanostructures”. The second was a poster presentation of UCLan’s Undergraduate Research Society; which is a society set up by myself and other UCLan students of which I am the chair. The conference was set out to consist of 10 sessions and in each of these sessions there was approximately 52 different classrooms across the campus each with 4 oral presentations in and at the same time posters were held across two sports halls with a total of around 130 posters being presented. In addition to the sessions, there were four plenary lectures; were key note speakers from different universities would present their research to the conference attendees. Furthermore, there was excursions made available by the conference on the Saturday afternoon and also a performance from the performing arts department on the Friday evening. The conference environment provided me the opportunity to meet new people to discuss the work I have done in a non-formal manner. Overall, the conference has been valuable to my degree and provided me with the experience of presenting at large conferences which will be an expectation in my future.

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