TERMIS Diary- Days 4 and 5

Here are my final 2 diaries from TERMIS and include highlights such as my presentation (eek!) and the conference dinner! I'm going to follow this up with a post linking to all my diaries, along with an overview of some of the key things I've learnt from my experience. Remember, feel free to ask me as many questions as you want!

Day 4

Ponente room, my presentation venue!

Today was D-day or rather P-day. I got myself ready at the apartment nice and early and dove straight into doing some of the vocal warm up’s I've learnt in my theatre group. They’re very effective, but sound quite strange to someone listening from the outside so either my colleagues are doing a great job of pretending they didn't hear me, or I actually got away without anyone listening in. I felt a bit nauseous before getting to the conference centre so I skipped breakfast and just went with drinking lots of water before going to the seminar my talk was part of. When I got to the room I needed to present in the panic really set it. To start with I’d forgotten the order of my slides, so I quickly used my netbook to run over them vaguely in my head before the seminar started. I then suddenly thought “What if someone asks me what the spectrum of bone is like?” realised I couldn't remember that either and desperately tried to get an image of the spectrum up using the conference internet. Unsurprisingly, this was one of the times when the internet just wouldn't work and I had to give up on that pretty quickly. I can't decide whether the timing of my talk was helpful or not from a nerves perspective. On the one hand, I was in the first session of the day. On the other hand, I was right at the very end of the first session and as the talks went on I started feeling more and more nervous, constantly noticing if more people were coming to the session or leaving (more were coming) and how tickley my throat was, but with an hour and a half to sit through I wanted to be careful not to drink too much water! Once the session started I was able to keep my mind on the talks quite well up until the one before mine. When I was called to the podium I managed to calm myself (up to a point) with lots of deep breaths, before launching straight into my talk. I made one slip up on the second slide where I said I would explain “What is tissue engineering?” rather than “What is Raman spectroscopy”, but I managed to recover. From that point on I was on auto pilot. I’d practised, practised and practised my talk so much that I was in performance mode, reciting my lines and playing the part of a knowledgeable scientist to the attendees. It’s strange. I can only really remember the bits of the talk where I laser pointed at the screen! Then it was over. I had one question. A very nice one about my thoughts on an interesting effect we’d noticed with some of my samples and I was done. The relief was immense! I was shaking a bit as I went to get my things and was roundly congratulated on a presentation well done by my supervisors and colleagues. I’d done it. My first conference presentation is over!

After the break, I went to see an excellent keynote on the nature of bone marrow stem cells in the body and how its seems that cells around blood vessels can actually become bone marrow stem cell like. I think it’s pretty common knowledge to some biologists, but it was all new for me and was pretty mind blowing. I decided to take a mini-break after the keynote to send texts home to tell people that my presentation went ok and to ring my better half (who had the conference program open on his laptop, trying to work out when I would be done). With that done it was back to the standard thing of watching more presentations! My favourite, was once again, the big plenary of the day by Professor Badylak, who's been doing some incredible work on repairing muscles in cases of significant muscle loss using tissue engineered scaffolds. The results he presented from the pre-clinical trial were simply incredible. 

It was then time for the 'Students and Young Investigators' evening. Which, after the success of the other social elements of the conference so far, was a bit of a let down. The bar we were in was beautiful, no doubt about that, but that meant expensive drinks and very small plates of food! The group I was with (Team Sheffield plus some lovely fellow students from Germany and the Czech Republic) nipped out for some ice cream (definitely worth doing) and came back to find most of the people gone, which was probably due to 330ml bottles of beer costing 5 euros. I did have a good evening over all (and was once again out later than planned), it was nice to be able to relax and chat. But for next time, in order to keep people together and networking, they really need a cheaper venue!

Day 5

I made it to the final day of the conference! There weren't many sessions that screamed out at me today as 'PhD useful' so I looked at what sounded interesting or fun and I ended up going to talks on simulating cells growing in a bioreactor on a computer, rapid prototyping and inkjet printing scaffolds. It was a nice and short day of talks, finishing at about 6pm to give us time to get ready for the conference dinner and pre-tours of the palaces of Genoa!

After changing at the apartment (going via a supermarket to pick up some Genoan  pesto to take home, you just have to) we headed down to the posh part of the old town for the palace tours. The two palaces we visited were filled with artwork, it wasn't really my thing, but it was a really nice opportunity to wander around some beautiful buildings. In the first palace we visited, we made it up to a viewing platform on the roof, which gave us some wonderful panoramic views of Genoa, right from the old town, to the docks and new town. It was a brilliant way to start the evening. Wandering around the houses and looking at the views, I couldn't help being strongly reminded my of the houses and city views in Assassin's Creed II, I could just picture Ezio running around the old town roof tops and shimmying into the courtyards of the cities richest families... yeah. I can never let the geekiness go.

Views of Genoa

Then came one of the highlights of the conference. The social dinner in the beautiful Palazzo della Meridiana, I'm going to go a bit George RR Martin and gush about the food now, so if you don't want a run down akin to the description of the feast of 77 courses, look away now!

Palazo della Meridana fresco

The conference dinner.

So, when we got into the Palazzo, we were supplied with a glass of prosecco and nibbles of yet more parmasan, which I'm starting to think should be the only way to start a formal dinner! The entry hall we were in was lovely, but it did make me wonder whether we would be standing to eat. Thankfully, my fears were most definitely alleviated when we were shown to the dinning rooms. It was breathtaking. The fresco on the ceiling, the carved stone fireplace, the platers on the table and not one but 3 wine glasses per person! It's safe to say I was more than a little awed. Then there came the food, all 4 glorious courses in true Italian style starting with seafood salad. Now, I'm not a salad person, but this was definitely my kind of salad as it was really just a seafood selection with a gherkin! We then had our pasta, a lovely thin pasta (small pieces to avoid having to slurp) in (not so surprisingly) Genoan pesto. I made a slight error as I didn't realise my server was waiting for me to say when to stop serving me (the others hadn't) so I ended up with quite a plateful (Maybe that was more of a happy accident than a mistake...). Next was amberjack fillet with pine nuts (there's a theme here) and potatoes. I'd never had amberjack before, so it was good to try something new. Finally, we got desert served with accompanying desert wine, a frozen mousse with grand marnier sauce, perfection! Even better was the fact Atra couldn't finish her's so I got one and a half deserts. You might think that would be the end of the culinary delights, but you'd be wrong. There was a selection of Italian pastries to enjoy (I managed one, it would be rude not to), a free spirits bar and espresso for those insensitive enough to caffeine to have strong Italian coffee at 11pm at night. Needless to say, it was a brilliant way to end the conference, full from a lovely meal, enjoying a disaronno on the rocks, chatting with my new friends from Sheffield about all things geeky. You can't get better than that! Well you could if you didn't end up going to bed at 1am and having  to get up at 7am. That could have been significantly improved... But, apart from the general lack of sleep, it was a fantastic end to a fantastic week. A week of firsts and fun, I might actually be looking forward to Photon14 (my next conference in London) now!