The first conference of the new academic year; held at Weetwood hall, which is a beautiful place. I wanted to wander around the grounds after the conference to wind down and take some snaps. But unfortunately the weather had others ideas as it was freezing and beginning to rain :( The conference itself was very interesting and the research was divided into either clinical, lab based or health interventions. The poster room was slightly cramped but I still made my way around the room and catch a glimpse of all of them. Point to note – I’m pretty sure that at conferences etc, all posters are suppose to be a standard size, but in this case the sizes varied wildly starting from the usual A1 size right to an A4 poster. Some huge were but very simplistic and easy to follow whilst others were much smaller but crammed with so much text that it made your eyes hurt. I can understand people wanting to get across as much of their information as possible but sometimes you just need to know when to stop.
In terms of the oral presentations on the day, despite being on the clinical team, I enjoyed all of them equally. More to the point I understood most of them but whilst talking to people during breaks I was surprised at how many people were confused by say the lab based talks. A bit worrying seen as the room was full of medics or medical researchers. Actually to be honest, towards the end of the day I started drifted off a little bit on certain topics such as genetics – something you do need to be alert for. I did feel bad about it but to fair it had been a long day. Another thing that surprised me was that this conference was suppose to be a way for the junior medics/researchers to get some conference practice and therefore it was very informal to put everyone as ease. Some audience members however took the whole thing very seriously and completely laid into the presenters during question time. I felt this was very unfair as it was hardly helping to build up their confidence. Other conferences in the future will be much tougher and more critical of their work which is why this conference was meant to be an ‘easy one’ – one where they could get some practice and gain some confidence. So I say shame on the meaner audience members.
Anyway to conclude, we had to pick three posters/ talks each for the prize session at the end. Below is a selection of the topics that I found interesting and voted for as the best in my opinion.
POSTERS:
1) Gwen Powel – “Lives not worth living”: an exploration of how healthcare professionals make decisions about serious handicap. #3
A model that describes how medics make life and death decisions. Very intesreting talk by the researcher.
2) Jayne Hutchinson – Do women who take supplements have a greater risk of cancer? #23 *
Clear easy to follow poster and an interesting hypothesis.
3) Nicola Kingswell – Mend your own teeth. #32 *
Development of a protein paint that can applied to a patients tooth which in turn stimulates replacement/growth and the build of healthy enamel.
TALKS:
1) Juile Burke – Injectable, biomimetic self-assembling peptides for skeletal tissue engineering. #7 *
A fun, lively and engaging talk on some very promising research.
2) Huiru Zou – Switching on dental pulp stem cells to rebuild teeth. #12 *
Using pulp cells to rebuild teeth naturally.
3) Yamuna Mohanram – Can dental pulp stromal cells repair bone under favourable microenvironments? #13
Using the pulp cells to stimulate and provide material for the growth of other bones.
All in all an interesting conference where much was learnt, well for me anyway.
In terms of the oral presentations on the day, despite being on the clinical team, I enjoyed all of them equally. More to the point I understood most of them but whilst talking to people during breaks I was surprised at how many people were confused by say the lab based talks. A bit worrying seen as the room was full of medics or medical researchers. Actually to be honest, towards the end of the day I started drifted off a little bit on certain topics such as genetics – something you do need to be alert for. I did feel bad about it but to fair it had been a long day. Another thing that surprised me was that this conference was suppose to be a way for the junior medics/researchers to get some conference practice and therefore it was very informal to put everyone as ease. Some audience members however took the whole thing very seriously and completely laid into the presenters during question time. I felt this was very unfair as it was hardly helping to build up their confidence. Other conferences in the future will be much tougher and more critical of their work which is why this conference was meant to be an ‘easy one’ – one where they could get some practice and gain some confidence. So I say shame on the meaner audience members.
Anyway to conclude, we had to pick three posters/ talks each for the prize session at the end. Below is a selection of the topics that I found interesting and voted for as the best in my opinion.
POSTERS:
1) Gwen Powel – “Lives not worth living”: an exploration of how healthcare professionals make decisions about serious handicap. #3
A model that describes how medics make life and death decisions. Very intesreting talk by the researcher.
2) Jayne Hutchinson – Do women who take supplements have a greater risk of cancer? #23 *
Clear easy to follow poster and an interesting hypothesis.
3) Nicola Kingswell – Mend your own teeth. #32 *
Development of a protein paint that can applied to a patients tooth which in turn stimulates replacement/growth and the build of healthy enamel.
TALKS:
1) Juile Burke – Injectable, biomimetic self-assembling peptides for skeletal tissue engineering. #7 *
A fun, lively and engaging talk on some very promising research.
2) Huiru Zou – Switching on dental pulp stem cells to rebuild teeth. #12 *
Using pulp cells to rebuild teeth naturally.
3) Yamuna Mohanram – Can dental pulp stromal cells repair bone under favourable microenvironments? #13
Using the pulp cells to stimulate and provide material for the growth of other bones.
All in all an interesting conference where much was learnt, well for me anyway.
* Indicates some of actual prize winners on the day. And yes the dentistry group are a pretty sly bunch :P
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