On the 3^rd and 4^th of September I attended the Materials & Molecular Modelling (MMM) Hub Conference at University of Central London (UCL). The conference itself was very interesting and having the opportunity to attend lectures from researchers all over the world was an invaluable experience to kick start my academic career.

I was able to assist with some of the administrative roles at the conference such as running the check-in stand which gave me a great opportunity to meet all the attendees, this helped relax me into the conference environment.

Through a mixture of talks and poster presentations I got to see first-hand some of the cutting edge research that is being done by academics and students alike in a wide variety of disciplines. It was also a great opportunity to network with fellow scientists and see how inter disciplinary teams are at the forefront of modern research projects.

The conference was held in the historic Wilkins Building at UCL which began Construction in 1827!

One particularly interesting talk was given by Chris Ablitt (Imperial College) about negative thermal expansion in perovskites. This phenomenon is where a material shrinks when heated, the opposite to the way most materials behave. This could have ground breaking influence on the electronic market as it could help counteract the expansion issues currently faced in smaller electronics like mobile phones, which are heavily silicon based.