I was really busy last week. Have been packing last minute and trying to write as much of my literature review as I can. As I knew that I will not be working on it when I go to TERMiS. In addition, I had a few things to finish in the lab. So that’s my excuse of not having a blog. :D
TERMiS stands for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society, the conference was held in Uppsala, Sweden and almost 1000 people have attended it. It's quite rare to go for such a big conference during your first year, but luckily I was invited and most of my trip was payed by ManBioMat (Manchester Bio-Materials) society. Obviously, I had to prepare a poster for the conference, I couldn't just go without anything. I also had a bit of a nightmare with printing this poster. I had it printed in Kilburn building and I explained to a guy thay I needed it printed on fabric as I'm going abroad and I can't have a poster holder with me. He said it's ok and he printed the poster right away. I was quite in a rush, so I took it and left and only later I realized that it was printed on regular paper and it already started to get damaged. I had to go again and explain the situation and gladly they cancelled my payment and I managed to print it again in Stopford building. Apparently they don’t print on fabric in Kilburn. Anyway back to the conference. Most of people from the materials faculty stayed in Radisson Blue hotel which was a lovely place and I have included some pictures above. Its location was also amazing as it was only 3 minutes away from the conference centre.
The conference itself was really nice. They always had around 4 session on different topics going at the same time, so you could go through the handbook and decide which was most appropriate to you. I have attended quite a lot of talks which are somewhat relevant to my project, thus it should help me to set up my primary goals. The only thing I didn’t like about the conference is the lack of free time. We would start at 8.30 am every day and finish around 6.30 pm. We would have two 30 minute breaks and one 1 hour break. During those breaks you obviously want to eat and do things like that, but also you want to network with people, have a look on posters as each day they are different and lastly have a look on stands of different companies and find out about new equipment. So you would be really rushed on the breaks to try and fit everything. In addition to that, the food was not really nice, it was always cold and they would always run out of water, remove coffee and etc.. So while being in a rush all the time, not sleeping enough and having the poor food has really affected our strength level. Also, for some reason quite a lot of people developed stomach aches.
Anyway back to positives. I had attended talks from some amazing people like: Prof. Ivan Martin,Prof Molly Stevens, Prof. Stephen Badylak, Prof. Katarina LeBlanc and Prof. Ali Khademhosseini. I also managed to talk with Prof. Ali Khademhosseini in person and added him on my LinkedIn where we continued our conversation.
Apart from going for sessions, we have attended a Gala dinner in Uppsala castle. I only have a few pictures which I included below.
Overall, I really enjoyed the conference, but it's nice to be back. Well, back home and writing my literature review :). Tomorrow will be a nice day, me and my boyfriend are going to London for 2Cellos concert, we are also going to the Tower of London and Maxwell's bar to try some freakshakes. :)
I have uploaded few more pictures on my instagram.