Abstract submission

This week I submitted my first ever abstract to a conference. I’m hoping to present a poster at the Society for General Microbiology’s (SGM) conference in March/April, obviously submitting an abstract doesn’t mean anything really, I need to wait until Feb to find out if it’s been accepted or not. It still feels like a big deal to me though 🙂 . This is my abstract, I’m the first author so I feel quite proud of it. The submission process is simple, it’s online and doesn’t take long if you already have your abstract ready.

The SGM conference is in Birmingham which makes it really convenient and means rather than having to pay for a hotel I can just get the train every day. In addition the SGM is willing to help fund students to attend, so fingers crossed I’m successful in that. Attending conferences as a PhD student is really important and the SGM seem to be really good at encouraging attendance by PhD’s and post-docs (hence the financial support offered). Conferences give you the chance to meet other people in related fields and, if your abstract is accepted, present your work to a new audience. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some constructive feedback and use the session to test my skills at talking about my research (if I’m accepted!).

There are a lot of sessions available, you don’t have to attend all the days – I think we’ll be going to 2-3, but it does mean some advanced preparation is definitely required. I’ve already had a look at the sessions on offer and highlighted a few presentations I’m keen to see. There’ll also be more speakers, chosen from those who submit abstracts for oral presentations, so even more to choose from when the final programme comes out. You don’t have to see everything, you can’t, it’s all about working out what’s important to you.

After the conference I’ll let you know how it was.

Have a great weekend everyone, I’ll be doing Brilliant Club training which I’m really looking forward to, I learnt so much designing and delivering a course last year that designing this one was such a different experience. A Brilliant Club update will be coming your way soon 🙂