PhD Programme Newsletter

Newsletter
Issue No. 9
PhD Programme
Hello dear EVIMalaR community!
This newsletter issue will be a special edition focusing on this year’s BioMalPar conference.
Since the focus of this newsletter lies on the students and their experiences during their time as
a PhD student, we asked some of our students to provide us with interesting stories and
background information about what they experienced during the conference. Many thanks to
Mariana, Samuel and Jennifer for sharing your stories with us!
With best wishes - Yvonne
1
The trials and tribulations of chairing a scientific session - Mariana De Niz
My first time chairing a session was actually this 2014 BioMalPar Conference. To
Increase the pressure, the session I was chairing was the first of the conference. Various
other student chairs came to me to say I would be setting the standard, and that they were
glad they were not first, and therefore would be able to ‘learn from the previous chairs
(and their mistakes)’… So, no pressure - I would be the first.
One could say I was rather unprepared, as I knew absolutely nothing about chairing. The first two people that came to my
mind in their chairing abilities were two of the supervisors I’ve had in my career: Chris Drakeley and Volker Heussler. I’ve
witnessed both of them chairing sessions in recent years, and both have great charisma, broad scientific knowledge, and wit.
They make chairing and presenting seem an easy and fun task. Sometimes they provide that extra ‘spark’ to help the
speakers, and keep the audience focused and attentive. When I approached Volker to ask for his advice, he gave me his usual
smile and his main recommendation: ‘be yourself, and keep to the time’. I then tried to think what type of chair I would like to
have if I were a speaker at a session. The main things that came to mind were a) that the chair should not (impersonally) just
read (or even mis-pronounce) my name and the title of my talk and b) that the chair ‘sells’ me and my talk to the audience in
a way that makes them look forward to hearing it. So I focused a bit on trying to do this, while keeping to the time… or that
was the plan. I tried to investigate a bit more about the speakers I would be introducing, aside from the abstract they
submitted. My first extremely intimidating task, was introducing the invited speaker, Prof. Patrick Duffy. I was familiar with
his research in general, but I tried to read as many papers as I could, to put together something decent and exciting to say.
Too much theoretical preparation, until I realized it was very likely that under pressure, I would forget it all, or that I would
bore the audience with a lengthy introduction full of stuttering. With no specific plan in mind anymore, I headed to the
conference room.
Extremely panicked, I got the audiovisual introduction, and finally met Prof. Duffy in person. We exchanged some interesting
conversation on his previous travels and research in Africa, his current research, his flight from America the previous day and
his interests. He helped me calm down a bit. In the meantime I also met other speakers of the session. While starting to relax,
I was told that the train of my co-Chair, Prof. Robert Sauerwein, was a bit delayed, and that I would probably have to start
without him. After this ‘news’, “the show began”. Following the introduction to the conference, I stood up and started my
‘speech’. I had forgotten many of the papers I had read of course. Instead, I referred to the conversations and main research
points the speakers and I had chatted about prior to the session. It was only half-way through the session while running up
and down in the Q&A sessions, that I realized that Volker’s recommendation ‘be yourself’ was exactly what I was trying to
do, rather than forcing my chairing to sound too formal or over-rehearsed. I started having fun doing the chairing. Prof.
Sauerwein arrived in the meantime, and was actually the one responsible for the sessions ending on time: I forgot a few
times to turn on the timers and lights for the speakers, and he reminded me to, otherwise we would have missed all the
coffee breaks. That would perhaps have made me rather unpopular.
At the end of the session, I wasn’t sure if I had done a good job or whether or not the speakers and audience were happy.
Prof. Sauerwein stood up, took the microphone from me, and asked the audience for applause for a ‘job well done’, later
referring to me as his ‘colleague’ and joking with my boss, Volker, that since I had ‘everything under control’, he ‘felt like a
hypnozoite’ being my co-chair. That’s not exactly true. With lots of encouragement and pep-talk from Volker prior to the
meeting, and Prof. Sauerwein during it, I felt the chairing went well. After my session, I could relax and watch the rest of the
chairs do a talented ‘chairing’ job. Overall, although I have now read published advice on ‘simple rules for chairing scientific
meetings’, the theory differs enormously from practice. This conference was novel in that it was the first time the organizers
allowed students to chair. Since there is no better way of learning than ‘on the job, I believe I speak for myself and others in
saying that the experience was well worth it.
2
My poster session experience at the 2014 BioMalPar conference - Samuel Abah
The BioMalPar conference to me is a great platform for research collaboration and peer contribution to
research work. Prior to the time of the conference, I had prepared to give a talk but because I really want
the opportunity for detail one to one discussions beyond the strict constrain of time I later decided to
present a poster.
My poster was a concise review of my work on hypohaptoglobinemia and susceptibility to severe malaria
anemia (SMA). We found that low level of haptoglobin (a protein known to sequester free hemoglobin) in
SMA is independent of the hemolysis. The presentation was a complete deviation from generally assumed
ideology; hence I was expecting a lot of criticism and contributions.
I had this feeling that people might not be very interested in my work and that I might not have a good
number of people visiting my stand but the contrary was the case. A good number of people visited my
stand; some were interested in the experimental approach used in the study while others made a good
suggestion on further work to further validate the data. Some of their suggestion expanded my horizon of
reasoning as to the next line of action. My research took a new phase after that section of enormous
interaction with inquisitive scientists.
Following some of the suggestion at the conference, I decided to do targeted sequencing of haptoglobin
gene for detail investigation of variations that could be associated with the low circulatory level of
haptoglobin in the patients and to look at other possible free hemoglobin scavengers and the mechanism of
scavenging.
At the end, I found my poster presentation to be very rewarding. I had the advantage of spending more
time discussing my work with experienced scientists, which ordinary would have not been possible in a
formal presentation due to time constraint. Not to even mention the advantage of closer proximity with
other scientist and exchange of address for further collaboration. I think it’s quite interesting that people
took time to move around the posters unlike my previous experiences from some conferences.
3
Poster Session - Jennifer Howard
The quality of the posters and work they
described was, as always, very high. All
aspects of Malaria research were
represented - from Golgi apparatus fission to
B cell immunity, molecular epidemiology in
Tanzania to swarm-like behaving
sporozoites. Each group working toward the
common goal of a better understanding of
malaria, so as to learn how to treat and
prevent this disease.
The helix shape of the EMBL conference
building is well suited for displaying posters.
There were a few specific posters that I want
to see, however it was impossible to reach
these without passing by many others, and
inevitably titles caught my eye - "Optical
tweezers can be used to probe sporozoite
force generation? How interesting, I’ll stop to
find out more..." By the time I reached the
top of the helix my head was full of
interesting new ideas, both those I set out to
find and the gems I discovered along the
way.
This year I was fortunate to present a poster
of my own. It is fascinating and extremely
useful to hear an outside view of a project. It
can be encouraging, when people ask the
same questions we are trying to answer, and
challenging, when they ask questions we
hadn’t even thought of. By the time the gong
sounded for the next session of talks my
notebook was full of new ideas to take back
to the lab.
4
Party
Breakfast Seminar
Faith Osier
Prof. Marita Troye-Blomberg
Promising African Scientist Award
Lifetime Achievement Award
5
Celebratory Dinner
Ceilidh - Dance Competition
Art Installation
6

Download Report