Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund Report – Hannah Asiki (2020, Chemistry in Cells – New Technologies to Probe Complex Biology and Medicine)

Thanks to the generous support of Univ, I was able to attend the British Society for Parasitology (BSP) annual Spring meeting in Edinburgh from the 11th to 14th of April. This meeting is held to bring together parasitologists from a range of themes, with dedicated sessions on trypanosomatids which are my particular area of research.

The conference was held in the McEwan hall, a magnificent venue normally used by the University of Edinburgh for graduation ceremonies. I presented a poster on the second evening, which received a good amount of interest leading to helpful suggestions to try and solve some of the hurdles I have been facing in the lab. I was also privileged to attend a talk by Dr Wyllie, a leading academic in trpanosomatid drug discovery which was incredibly relevant to my research work, and chatting to her afterwards has led to the potential for a collaboration to help progress my project.

In between the interesting talks I was able to fit in a short walk up to Arthur’s Seat, a hill in Holyrood park overlooking the city with amazing views even despite the drizzle. I also walked the Royal Mile (the road between Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh castle) and discovered that there are a quite a lot of “Harry Potter” significant locations, a similar theme to wandering around Oxford! There was a conference dinner on the final evening followed by a Ceilidh, a fitting choice and very fun experience!

I am very grateful to Univ and thank them for their generous support in funding my travel. I have learned a lot from this conference and have returned to my research with new experiment ideas and potential collaborations going forward.

Find out more about the range of travel grants and scholarships available to assist Univ students on our Travel Grants page or read further travel reports.

Published: 13 July 2023

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