Bismah Mateen, a first year Doctoral Student, shares her second blog for us, about her experience of attending the Platelet Society Conference 2024.
Hello again, this blog is about my very first conference!
I submitted an abstract a few months prior to the Platelet Society Conference in Aberdeen, and it was accepted for a poster presentation, which was very fitting as the Platelet Society funded my summer studentship! My poster was entitled: “Investigating the Effects of Indoxyl Sulphate on Thrombosis and Haemostasis.”
The days before the conference I was a mixed bag of emotions. I was nervous as I’m not the best on planes and I knew I was going to miss my family as it would be my first time away from home, but I was also very excited as it was my first conference. I was glad to be spending time with other members of the Thrombosis Group at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The Platelet Society Conference 2024 consisted of an Early Career Researchers (ECR) day, followed by two main meeting days.
The ECR day had interesting career talks where invited speakers shared their journey, including the successes and failures they’ve experienced. Through this, I learnt about many different career paths I was not previously aware of, like Patent Attorneys. The second and third days were the main meeting, showcasing plenary talks and selected oral presentations. All were of a very high academic quality, interesting and shared exciting latest findings in the field. This as well as the networking session encouraged collaboration and scientific discussion.
During the breaks, I was a little nervous to present my poster, but also confident that I had the background knowledge and I was excited to share the work I had carried out so far. I had many senior expert researchers interested in my poster and they were all open to giving me feedback and advice on future directions.
Reflecting on my whole experience at the conference, I felt that I was leaving very motivated
to investigate my topic further, taking up all the new advice I was given. I also got to meet and
network with the research community.
And now a little bit about Aberdeen; it was simply beautiful (I even saw a little family of
deer!), and I would love to go back and explore the areas more. I was very impressed
with the innovative platelet research being led in Aberdeen and would love to learn and
collaborate!
The next Platelet Society Conference will be in Manchester, end of April 2025, right here in
our new John Dalton building at Manchester Metropolitan University. So, if your research is platelet
related, I cannot recommend attending enough!