Reece Mazade Conference Summary
Reece Mazade
Ph.D. Candidate (Graduated 08/13/2015)
Physiological Sciences, GIDP
Conference Summary
Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
(ARVO) Annual Conference
Denver, Colorado
May 3-7, 2015
I attended the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2015 scientific conference in Denver, Colorado from May 3 through May 7. ARVO is the largest international conference on vision related research with over 10,000 attendees. Additionally, this conference is attended by not only research scientists, but also many clinical scientists and physicians, adding a unique opportunity for cross talk between the two. The conference is spread over 5 days with each day consisting of various poster and talk sessions split into specific field subgroups. These sessions typically run all day and in addition to the actual presentations, foster a large amount of conversation and networking.
My long term goal is to continue in academic research, of which a significant portion is the ability to present and share my research at scientific conferences. Being able to convey the importance of my research is vital when I apply for grants and continue on in postdoctoral research. My goal for this conference was to look for potential postdoc opportunities and to get feedback on my current projects for my manuscript and dissertation. I was able to accomplish both of these goals.
My submitted abstract was selected for a poster presentation in the Development, Adaptation, Modulation session, as part of the Visual Neuroscience section of ARVO. Additionally, my poster was selected to participate in the Members-In-Training Poster Award Competition. This competition consists of five posters chosen from each ARVO section for a total of around 70 posters out of the thousands of posters in attendance. This was a great honor and good experience. I received not only some good questions, but acknowledgement from other presenters and scientists on the interesting findings of my project.
In addition to my actual presentation, I was kept very busy during the rest of the conference. My poster was in the middle of the conference and the rest of the time consisted of attending poster and talk sessions on a number of current topics in the retinal neuroscience field. In fact, several discussions with other researchers have provided me with some insight on what would be good follow up projects for my dissertation work. This will be very helpful when I start to finish up my projects for publication.
Attending this conference and gaining all the benefits of doing so was only made possible through help with travel costs from the HE Carter Travel Award. I was very excited to receive this award as it helped in my professional development as a young scientist pursuing a difficult career. It was important for me to present my work at this time as I am becoming more familiar with other researchers in the retinal neuroscience field and want to establish a place within the field.