ASMR conference

I just got home from the conference. It was the most draining and fun day, despite the long build-up and all the terror associated with it. It was an opportunity to spend time with the gang from work, I learnt a lot and, most importantly, I took the plunge and spoke in front of a pretty high-profile audience! The Australian Society for Medical Research did not know what hit it.

I was all dressed up at 7am for Ryan to pick me up. We collected Marcus from Claremont and drove north of the city to Edith Cowan University, where the conference was held. After getting completely lost on campus, we finally found the right car park and building in time for registration. This involved picking up a sticker with our names on, I assume for networking purposes, and hanging around waiting for it all to start. Pretty much our whole lab was there, either to present or just to support the team. At 9am, we went into the main lecture theatre for the introductory talks. Jess’ old school friend Britt, who I met at a dinner a while ago, sat down right in front of me; she’s lovely and it was great to catch up with her one last time before I leave.

The room I presented in (it was more full, I promise)

After a short welcome from the organisers, a plastic surgeon specialising in burns took to the stage for the plenary seminar. She showed us some pretty harrowing photos of 80+% burn coverage and worse, mostly of children, which I think most people found pretty hard to swallow. Even people like us, who deal with animal surgeries every day, aren’t used to seeing such horrific injuries and I struggled to fathom how she deals with that on a daily basis. However, after the intial shock factor, she told us about this incredible therapy they’ve developed, which is essentially stem cells in an aerosol. Spraying them onto the edges of skin grafts helps them to stretch as the patient grows, which stops scars from burns sustained in childhood becoming taut and raised in adulthood. Incredible! Forgive me for geeking out about it, but this kind of thing genuinely excites me these days.

The first session began: Those presenting and judging in the three smaller seminar rooms left, but the majority of people stayed in the main lecture theatre which, as luck would have it, is where I was presenting. The least experience people talking in the biggest, scariest room: Makes sense. At least some of the pressure was taken off by Lindy not being present, as she was judging one of the other sessions elsewhere. There were six speakers in my session; here’s what we all talked about:

 It’s lucky that I have the programme to look back on because I was not aware of anything going on around me; it all went by in a blur of nerves! I do vaguely remember Ivana, the other student from Bath, doing her presentation, but being last and having to watch everyone else go up and talk just made me freak out. Before I knew it, it was time to make the longest walk of my life down to the front of the room, making a lot of noise in flip flops. As I started my presentation, it was so nice to have my team’s smiling faces looking down on me from the back of the room and I managed to shake my nerves and give a pretty coherent talk. The questions were all pretty easy to answer too, which was a surprise as I’d done next to no preparation for them. My talk marked the end of the session and, as we breaked for morning tea, I breathed a huge sigh of relief as this meant I could relax and enjoy the rest of the day (and all the free food!).

Next, we watched a session in one of the smaller rooms, which Kalina from our lab was presenting in. Each session featured students of one particular level of experience; as we were exceptions, Ivana and I were lumped in with Honours students (the first year after graduation), and I could really tell the difference between those who presented with me and Kalina’s second year PhD group. They got much tougher questions, that’s for sure! Kalina had a little altercation with a lady who was trying to give her a hard time but failing miserably, which was pretty funny. I was really impressed with the breadth of topics being covered; to think that, just in and around Perth, so much research into a whole host of diseases is going on is pretty fascinating.

Lunch was a solid curry buffet and a chance to get feedback from everyone. Not only did they say I came across clearer and more confident than the others in my session, but Lindy came up to me and said she’d been approached by a few independent people who commented on how impressive I was, which I was pretty chuffed with! For pretty much the least experience person at the entire conference, I’m so happy I bit the bullet and agreed to speak. With all the nice things people were saying, I was probably walking around with a gigantic head for the rest of the day!

The two afternoon sessions were pretty interesting, although I did get a bit drowsy as I haven’t sat through anything vaguely resembling a lecture for a year now! German Jenny (affectionate nickname) and Ryan both did really well in the first one and Andy, despite his cold, did a good job in the second. On that note, it’s winter here now and everyone is ill, so I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t come down with anything before I fly home!

Ryan doing his thing

They put on free drinks afterwards in the university bar and I got my first taste of seeing our supervisors knocking back the wine, which I sincerely hope to see much more of at the conference dinner on Friday night, where we’ll find out if we’ve won any awards. Ryan, Andy, Marcus and I had a few beers and played some pool before we made a move as it was getting late. Ryan and I had dinner at a Sushi bar in Claremont on the way home, which was lovely; he’s my dearest friend at work and I almost welled up when he was saying that they all feel closer to me than any of the past Bath students, so I’m sure I’ll be an absolute wreck on Friday night when I’m saying goodbye!

It’s an early night for me after a very big day, but one I’m really happy I participated in. There aren’t many undergraduates who can say they’ve presented at a national level conference! These next two days are going to manically busy, what with a lot of loose ends to tie up at work and all sorts of social things scheduled, but at the end of it all I’ll be on a plane home. It’s all getting very exciting!

Andy, myself and Ryan