Today was the first day of the three-day long diamond conference at the university of Hasselt. And although this sounds as-if it is a mere small-scale local conference, it is actually one of the two main international conferences in the field. The Surface and Bulk Defects in Diamond (SBDD) workshop grew in twenty years from a small event with only a few dozen participants to the current event with over 200 participants. As such, it is the place to be, for one as me, who is dipping into a new field of materials.
One thing that already became quite clear today, is the fact that there are many opportunities in this field for the computational materials scientist, as the large majority of the researchers are experimentalists. Of the >120 posters presented, I have only discovered about 5 theoretical ones. Having had very nice chats with their presenters I already learned a lot of what I will have to keep in mind when studying diamond. But so far, I have not come across any issues that are impossible to resolve, which is good news :-).