Cohort 2 student Neshika Wijewardhane had this to say about her experience:
‘The conference was 4 days long with over 200 participants at the New York University Abu Dhabi. Participants included micro and nano robotistic, clinicians, engineers, and physicists, across all research careers, masters, and PhD students, to professors and industry partners. Each day started and ended with 3 plenary talks from leaders in the field with a series of parallel talks in the middle from the authors of the submitted papers. The general themes of the talks included swarm robotics, medical applications for micro-robots, automation and characterisation, and control by optical, thermal, and mechanical stimuli. I presented my paper entitled ‘Modular Wavelength Adaptation of the Dynamic Optical MicroEnvironment’ about our robotic device the DOME, which can now irradiate a select population of cells with light, this has applications for increased wound healing and cancer therapies. Between sessions, there were breaks and lunch which led to interesting conversations between new peers. As this was my third conference it was great to catch up with colleagues and friends I had met in the previous conferences, especially from the last MARSS. I had the opportunity also to sightsee around Abu Dhabi, visit the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and go to the desert.’