APMC We Go!

APMC is the largest conference related to Microwave in Asia Pacific!!!!! APMC stands for Asia Pacific Microwave Conference.

There are 5 students of Katolab attending the conference in Yokohama; Amalina, Chen, Song, Seiki and Ssali. Before I go further, do you know where Yokohama is? Yokohama is a developed city in Kanagawa ken which is near Tokyo. I’m sure everyone knows where Tokyo is.

These five students have been excited to join this conference since Day 1. We started our journey early in the morning and arrived at Fukuoka Airport. But you know what?! Our flight was delayed for 3 hours!! But since we are very diligent students, we are not wasting our time, we decided to attend the conference online. Luckily the conference format is hybrid. After we arrived in Yokohama, we straightly went to the conference venue. It was heavily raining at that time but it never broke our passion to attend the conference. We arrived at the venue just 2 minutes before the program finished. the registration counter was already closed but Amalina negotiated at her best for the staff to let them register since Chen and Seiki were going to present their paper tomorrow morning. The staff let us register at last. That sums up our first day at APMC.

On the second day, we attended the conference in the morning to attend some interesting talks and also give moral support to Chen and Seiki’s presentation. The session started with some other university students and company representatives and goes to Chen’s presentation. Chen did well during the presentation. He did receive some comments and constructive questions from the audience and the chairman. He did answer and having two ways conversations with the audience successfully. Just right after Chen is Seiki’s turn. Seiki’s presentation is so outstanding. He managed to present in a way that really attract people’s attention. He received a few questions from the audience and the assistant chairman. Right after that, we went for lunch and attended the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony talks are wonderful. The application and advantages of the terahertz wave have been presented by a professor. We, as students that doing research in this field did focus on the talk to the point we forget that we want to attend another paper presentation in a different room. That night we are having “uchiage” in a sushi restaurant.

On our third day, we attended the conference as usual and also the exhibition. The exhibition is so interesting. That is so many big and well-known companies join the exhibition such as Anritsu, Analog Devices and many more. Kato sensei explained to us there are two types of companies; OEM (the manufacturer) and dealer company. Most companies here are related to microwave technology and we are still enjoying the exhibition since we got a lot of new information and of course the merchandise!! Ssali was really excited about this exhibition. We visited almost all the booths at the exhibition. On the night, we have our dinner in a Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown! Why did we choose this restaurant? Because one of us, Amalina is from Malaysia! no other reason. that night, We also were surprised by an ex-labmate Ye who graduated last semester. He drove from Atsugi to join our dinner and of course to meet us!

On the final day, besides attending talks, we are also giving moral support to Amalina. She was doing a poster presentation. She has been attended by many people from different countries; Japanese college students, researchers from Austria, the Middle East, and India, representatives from Sony Corporation, and others. She did receive comments and advice from other researchers and handled them well. Next after Amalina’s poster presentation, we attended Song’s presentation. As usual, Song nailed every presentation. He answered every question calmly and constructively. No question that can’t be answered by him. As Song is the last presenter, that means that’s the end of our APMC journey.

Right after that, we went back to Fukuoka and now writing a blog for you to read. After all, we did really enjoy the conference. Besides the overwhelming knowledge that we received, we also enjoy our time together since the three of us going to graduate this semester. Surely we will mesmerize by this memory in the future.

Written by; Amalina. Picture by Chen.