Revathi Pillai Conference Summary
Revathi Pillai
M.S. Candidate
Physiological Sciences
ObesityWeek
Las Vegas, NV
November 4-7, 2019
As a recipient of the Herbert E. Carter travel award, I was given the opportunity to attend the ObesityWeek 2019 conference in Las Vegas. As a second-year graduate student, this was my first opportunity to attend and present my poster at an international conference. This is an annual conference that combines The Obesity Society and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) to bring together and share innovations and ideas pertaining to mechanisms and treatments for obesity with a special emphasis on diabetes this year. I presented my poster titled “Estradiol Mediates Weight Gain in Sleep Disrupted Female Rats” for the first time at this conference. I took this opportunity to practice and polish my public speaking skills as I got to talk about my research to an audience coming from various backgrounds. In addition to that, I also got to work on my critical thinking skills as I learned to answer all kinds of questions from my audience. Perhaps, the most beneficial part of the poster session was the constructive feedback I received pertaining to my research. With this new information, I have a few new ideas as to how to proceed forward with my research and the next steps involved. In addition to the poster session, I was able to attend 3-4 seminars/talks which were all either directly or indirectly related to my research. One of these talks examined the role of sex differences in the physiology and psychology of eating and how that leads to eventual weight gain between men and women. Another one of these talks focused heavily on the role of the brain and how it mediates hunger and appetite in humans. Overall, this was a great opportunity and my first conference could not have been a better experience. Attending ObesityWeek 2019 gave me a chance to network with many other individuals in a similar field as me and explore all the research going on in the obesity field that I was unaware of. I am thankful for the Carter Travel Award for making this possible.