It has been a long time since I got up really early on a Saturday morning and today, I had to because of the Sigma Xi Multi-disciplinary Research Colloquium. It started off early, around 8.30 am and went on till about 1 pm. Almost all presentations were clear, crisp, well thought out and pertained to engineering / technological applications relevant to every day life. I was glad that one of the judges at least, Dr. Perger, knew the significance of my numbers. There could be several reasons why I did not win a prize -

• Dress - probably the event required very smart turn out, like a blazer and a tie or so.
• Topic of research and presentation - it’s a theory and more of computationally oriented; not many will appreciate the significance of my numbers. OR my inability to make general audience understand what these numbers mean.
• General audience can picturise, understand and appreciate the technological applications more easily than it does of some set of numbers and pretty looking molecules.
• My way (posture, etc) of presenting my research.
• Time constraint - choosing what to present and what not to present; how to present and how not to present - I
  will have to work on it.

I did learn some very important lessons from this colloquium and I am glad that the organizers will send us judges’ comments.