North East Postgraduate Conference

The North East Postgraduate (NEPG) conference is heralded as ‘the largest student-led annual biomedical conference in the UK, which is aimed at providing postgraduate students with opportunities to present to, and network with one another. There is also the opportunity to help organise the conference itself!

This year its venue was in Newcastle’s ‘third cathedral’: St James’ Park, the home of Newcastle United.

It was my fourth year attending NEPG, the first during my MRes in 2017 and each of the years of my PhD (2020 - date).

I’ve enjoyed the past NEPGs I’d attended, the Great North Museum: Hancock and Civic Centre are both stunning venues. It’s always good to chat with other researchers - the good, the bad and the ugly of doing a PhD is fairly universal and sometimes there’s really nice experiments that translate to your own work. And when your venue is St James’ it’s hard not to be a little excited!

Conferences can be a hugely intimidating place, do you know what you’re talking about, is that a silly question? Wow, they really know their stuff! NEPG takes some of that anxiety down a notch or two, attendees are peers who aren’t as prone to ‘comment rather than a question’.

I submitted an abstract in early summer, for either an oral presentation or a poster, as in previous years I’d had a poster accepted. I found out that I’d been accepted to present an oral presentation in September, and it was here that the nerves began in prepping a 10-minute story from my past three years of research! Fortunately, a small part of my research had been used as the foundation of the undergraduate and postgraduate research projects I helped supervise earlier this year.

On the day, I walked from the medical school through the beautifully autumnal Leazes park to St James’, I’ve not felt nerves like it, I certainly got a little sense of how Sam Fender felt when performing there in June!! Registration was on the fourth floor in the barracks, passing the statues of footballing legends Alan Shearer and Sir Bobby Robson on the way in.

The conference kicked off with a warm welcome from the organisers before going into the networking workshop with Jeni Smith from NetKno - a local company which helps people and companies to improve their networking strategies. There was plenty of helpful tips to navigate networking, which is a hugely transferable skill as a researcher or someone moving about the personal and professional world. Carrying an empty coffee cup, so there’s a smooth exit and a guide to which groups are easiest to engage in conversation with, were two golden tips to pick up.

I was presenting in the Microbiology Session in Four Quarters. My presentation, “Indole or Indon’t does indole effect Salmonella motility” looked at how a small molecule, which smells like diesel, produced by many different bacteria, makes the infamous Salmonella swim poorly which may make it less efficient at causing disease.

Presenting always feels like an out of body experience to me, but I delivered the talk without running over the time limit and it prompted some great questions from peers both during the session and out on the conference floor. The other presenters in my session shared exciting aspects of their research on other important human disease-causing bacteria, Pseudomonas ,which can cause disease in cystic fibrosis lungs and another in mycobacteria which causes Tuberculosis.

The breadth of biomedical research on offer covered Molecular Biology, Cancer, Genetics, Neuroscience and Public Health. I caught the molecular biology session after the coffee break, I learned about projects working on Neuroblastoma and Cattle Ticks. Some brilliant research and storytelling on offer, I was glad not to be on the judging panel for best presentation!!

The keynote was presented by Robert Seaborne, from Inside Academia, who shone a light on the PhD experience and presented a lot of relatable feelings during the many peaks and troughs of the journey.  There were some insightful practices which I took from the talk, particularly ‘controlling the controllables’. Some problems are just out of your control and stressing about them isn’t an efficient use of your energy. If things go wrong in the lab that aren’t your fault, you’ve just got to pivot and do something else. Also, worrying about problems that haven’t happened can mean you’re sad twice.

The second coffee break aligned with the poster session, bustling with postgraduate researchers chatting through their hard work. It was brilliant to see some familiar faces from the University, my training programme and even someone from my undergraduate studies that are now elsewhere in the North.

Poster sessions are a bit of an anomaly, sometimes the presenter is there, sometimes they aren’t. At times it’s difficult to chat about the work when you’re crammed in and there’s five different people trying to talk at the same time. I love a good word play title, so the one that catches my eye is where I go first. It’s nice to get a talk through or an elevator pitch to start the conversation. Especially at events centred on postgraduate students it’s important to support each other, so stopping by a poster that’s not got someone as an audience and providing some feedback makes a huge difference.

The final session covered careers, something we often don’t think about until later in our studies, especially when there are bigger fish to fry in dissertation/thesis deadlines or other written outputs. You don’t have to stay in academia post-PhD, whether it’s a step into industry, joining a spin-out, or starting one yourself or even science communication. This careers session covered all of that and someone who works in a more computational background. It really underlines the fact that the training you get during a PhD and also some of the opportunities that are available mean you can do many other careers than a research academic.

My takeaway note is if there’s an opportunity you’re interested in absolutely get involved – it could be fun and what have you got to lose! Whether it’s to attend and present at a postgraduate conference, or participate in conference organisation, I’d thoroughly recommend it as you gain so much experience as a ‘jack of all trades’; from time management, events management, web design, improved communication skills, you really do cover it all.