Conferences at a crossroads: networking, serendipity, and the cost of showing up

Scientific conferences remain one of the most effective mechanisms for driving multidisciplinary materials research forward, stemming not just from the podium talks delivered and posters presented but also through the informal, often accidental exchanges that happen around them. At the same time, the carbon cost, financial burden, and unequal accessibility of conference travel are serious enough that the field cannot keep treating the traditional in-person meeting as the primary way to build a research network. The community's task is not to choose between showing up or logging on, but to instead design conference formats deliberately around the mechanism that works: sustained, trust-building contact between people who likely otherwise would have never read each other's papers.