I am a fifth year pure mathematics graduate student; I'm currently on the academic job market. I'm traveling to a few conferences this semester and I believe that I should take this opportunity to meet and talk to people from different universities. I don't find it particularly easy to strike up conversations with relative strangers (while I have some skill at this in 'real-life', the added pressure of 'Oh my God this is a person who wrote a seminal paper in my field' is somewhat nerve-wracking)
What is the best way to introduce oneself as a graduate student to senior members of one's academic community?
I've considered the following:
- Hello, my name is X, I'm student of Y at University Z
- Hello, my name is X, I work on ABC
- Hello, my name is X, it's great to meet you, I really enjoyed/am currently reading your paper on DEF [[assuming of course that this is true]]