Speaking at Trinity College Dublin (ROI)

I was invited to give a talk as part of the Department of Zoology Seminar Series at Trinity College Dubin (TCD; http://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/) at the end of November. I took an ~2 hour commuter train ride from Belfast to Dublin, then went just 2 stops on the DART train (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) and found myself at the edge of the Trinity campus. The navigating was made super-easy by my travel companion, Kath, who normally spends Tues-Thurs at Trinity, but changed her schedule this week to host me there (so nice!). While at TCD, I met with lots of brilliant students (undergraduate and graduate) and faculty (postdocs and professors) in the Department, and found them to be a very friendly group.   

I had a really nice lunch with some of the graduate students in the Department - they were really friendly and seemed like a very cohesive and productive group.

My talk was in a lecture hall in the Botany Building. In fact, it was in the lecture hall that was featured in the 1980's film "Educating Rita" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educating_Rita_%28film%29). Here I am impersonating Michael Caine in that film!

My talk, titled "Understanding multi-scaled relationships between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems," was well-attended and well-received by a mixture of students and staff (~50 or so people I would guess). Unfortunately, my talk directly conflicted with another seminar that was being given by a big-wig who holds some funding purse strings...so, a few of the people who would have normally attended my talk had to go to that one instead (stupid politics!). But, I had a lot of interesting questions after the talk and discussions during the informal social afterwards. Note that this informal social included beer, was attended by undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and profs, and it was held in the Zoology Dept. I really wish that MSU would relax its policies regarding such activities on campus. The atmosphere is so much more comfortable when somewhat socially awkward scientists can drink a beer while networking! One thing that I noticed was that the undergrads who attended were really quite amazing. My impression is that TCD is a very good school and that the Zoology majors all are required to conduct thesis research. Scientists in training!

Two scholars who I had conversations with and who could be future collaborators are Drs. Ian Donohue and Andrew Jackson (http://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/staff/). They are both super-nice and super-brilliant. However, it was pretty funny - the day was sort of a comedy of errors. Many of the Profs I was supposed to have formal meetings with had to cancel or rearrange their schedules at the last minute, and I ended up speaking to most of them more informally than was planned. Anyway, I will likely return to Trinity this winter to work with some of them.

A special thanks to Drs. Katherine Webster and Natalie Cooper for hosting me and helping with my 

travel arrangements. 

UPDATE: Here's the Trinity EcoEvo blog post about my talk. http://www.ecoevoblog.com/2014/01/29/seminar-series-kendra-cheruvelil-michigan-state-universityqueens-university-belfast/