I'm back! I made it home from the conference on Saturday so things are beginning to get back to normal. Here are my diaries from the first two days of my conference experience at TERMIS/EU the meeting of the EU chapter of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. If you want to have a look at some of the official conference information you can find it here. and the abstracts from the conference can be found here (I'm on page 113 (75 of the pdf) and I'm very excited that something I wrote is in a journal). Hopefully, my dairies will give you a window into what academic conferences are like, but if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!
Day 2
On the second day of TERMIS the science Gods gave to me one ryanair flight and a drinks reception by the sea!
Things are now officially under way now at the conference. I
am now in Genova, after flying in with one of my supervisors and despite a
slight hiccup with my suitcase falling off the baggage carousel the wrong way,
things are going pretty well. We have a lovely apartment which I managed to find
on my own, I'm registered, and I have some idea of the things I'm going to see
tomorrow. The main thing so far that I wasn't prepared for is the heat. I'm
definitely a cold whether person so temperatures of nearly 30 degrees make me want to
melt! In terms of what actually happened at the conference, we had plenary talks (which are 30 minute plus lectures of particular importance) by some of the giants of tissue engineering. It
was a really good opportunity to see some of the big academics in the field give their thoughts on where next for tissue
engineering and what strategies we should use which, incidentally, they didn't agree on!
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| The view from the aquarium |
After my first gelato of the trip on the harbour side (which was a great opportunity for my supervisor to point out particularly important people to me), I
went to the conference opening social, the ambiguously named "Welcome Cocktail". Would there be food? How many drinks would we get? Thankfully the event surpassed
my expectations immensely. The reception was held in an aquarium, so we were
able to tour the attractions before the reception, meaning I saw manatees,
dolphins, seals and penguins! A very unexpected but very welcome treat. The
reception itself was lovely, many drinks (not just one) were on offer and we
had a full buffet laid on that was continually refilled. The highlight was
definitely the huge wheels of parmesan that you could just shave bits from, I was in
cheese heaven! But the food is only half of the story, drinks receptions = networking, or at least attempts at networking. Dun dun dun! I am not a networking fan. Oh
no. Not me. Trying to speak to people you don't know, but who all seem to know each
other is something I'd rather not do... But I did it! Thanks very much to my supervisor introducing me to people. But.
But! I managed to come up with appropriate things to say in the conversation
and not melt into the floor and I even managed to strike up bits of
conversation independently with a few PhD students. Win! So I dedicate this
victory to the wine. I can definitely say that today I learnt networking goes better with alcohol. Maybe
in the future I should carry a hip flask with me. Or just get over it...
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| Magazzini del Cotone Conference Center |
It's now day 3 of the trip and the second day of the conference proper so everything has kicked off and is in full swing.
We're now into the nitty gritty of the conference, attending presentation after
presentation after presentation and learning about all kinds of new and
exciting research. Yesterday’s 3 half hour lectures were most definitely just a
warm up. Boy is this tiring! We're doing 830am to 730pm (with around 2 hours of
breaks). I find it really hard to sit and listen for that amount of time!
Especially when people dive into more hard core biology when my brain would
really rather drift off and I have to fight to stop it. Having said that, there were lots of really interesting talks and I've attended presentations on the diverse topics of imaging, bone tissue engineering, bioreactors and more. My favourite lecture was on the use of simulations to predict the process of tissue repair and the application micro-CT techniques to image implants and showed some really exciting results. The main blot on the horizon is the lack of drinks around the venue even though there are plenty of bottles around. The problem is that the cups are way too small to allow you to
get a good drink, which is not so fun in the heat. Also, every time I flick through the program I get the dreaded
reminder that I actually have to get up and speak tomorrow. I think, or rather
hope I'm ready. I can’t change anything else now as I've handed my slides over
to the conference so I suppose I should stop worrying about it. Unfortunately
that’s easier said than done; the last time I practised my presentation was on
Monday night at the B&B which feels like a very long time ago now.
Networking is still a big thing, tonight we had a “Sheffield
Bioengineering and Health Technologies Group Meal”. However this quickly grew
to be much, much bigger than I had originally anticipated. At first it was just
people from the Dental School, then people from Sheffield University, then
friends, collaborators and anyone else who fancied joining us. In the end it
was a fantastic evening. We went to an amazing little restaurant in the middle
of the rabbit warren that is the old town of Genova. The food was great, but
also surprising as my lack of Italian meant I guessed what looked good and I
ended up with a squid and octopus starter and a squid ink pasta main! I was also
able to speak to the researcher who gave the big closing lecture of the day
which was extremely exciting. I suppose it looks like I'm
getting into this networking thing. Maybe. The only down side of the evening
was the time we got back home, nearly midnight. Not exactly what I was hoping for with my presentation tomorrow, but it did mean I was tired enough to go to sleep
without lying awake worrying for ages, so maybe that was a good thing...
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