LivResCon9 success: Breaking into Clinical Academia
The Liverpool Research Society was delighted to welcome attendees to their ninth Annual Research Conference, ‘LivResCon9: Breaking into Clinical Academia’ on 10th February. Fourth year Student Doctor Anjum Khanom was this year’s conference Chair and takes us through the highlights of the day.
LivResCon9: Keynote Speakers and Workshops
"With an excellent turnout of over 70 students, including medical, dentistry, and veterinary students, we were delighted to welcome our three excellent keynote speakers and workshop facilitators who each presented engaging sessions from diverse research backgrounds.
The event was sponsored by INSPIRE, a national initiative which promotes and facilitates undergraduate research, by encouraging students to involve themselves in clinical academia.
Colin Michie, a clinical academic and Consultant Paediatrician by background, delivered a lecture on ‘The Importance of Undergraduate Research’. Evidenced by his own international work relating to immunology, maternal and paediatric health, he emphasised both the importance, and necessity, of being inquisitive, accessing information and harnessing artificial intelligence to overcome newfound clinical challenges.
Mr. Jayden Gittens, PhD Student at the University of Liverpool, and Dr. Ryan Peysner, Specialised Foundation Doctor at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, delivered an incredibly successful ‘Critical Appraisal’ workshop. Using a systematic review, students were encouraged to judiciously analyse the purpose, methods, statistics, and arguments posed by a paper in the field of general surgery, as well as broadly theorising where systematic reviews stands within the current literature, and what more needs to be done to change practice.
Professor Eithne Comerford, Professor of Small Animal Surgery at the University of Liverpool, delivered an insightful lecture on OneHealth to our delegation. Given the mixed clinical backgrounds of our delegation, this lecture highlighted the importance of working together to provide multi-disciplinary approaches and tackling challenges from novel angles.
Mr. Wahbi El-Bouri, Tenure Track Fellow at the University of Liverpool delivered a lecture on ‘Digital Twins and In Silico Trials’ – an innovative discussion which intrigued students and made them feel hopeful about his explanations of the use of in silico trials to expedite clinical research in a sustainable manner. Although an engineer by background, Mr. El-Bouri artfully appealed to a healthcare audience to highlight the potential uses of ‘Digital Twins’ in the not-so-distant future.
During the lunchbreak, students were able to socialise and network with previous speakers from the day. We were also able to run our poster presentation parallel to the break, and our oral presentations straight after. We would like to congratulate all the delegates who presented at LivResCon9. The winners were:
Poster Presentations
1st place Poster – Irene Jackson Sillah, University of Liverpool
2nd place Poster – Kiera Owens, University of Keele
3rd place Poster – Emily Heardman, University of Liverpool
Oral Presentations:
1st place Oral Presentation – Saniya Ansari, University of Liverpool
2nd place Oral Presentation – Andrew Bonsu, University of Liverpool
For our Advancing Beyond Graduation Seminars, we hosted two lectures in parallel for students to have exposure to the variety of post-graduate clinical academic pathways available to them. Dr. Kartik Goyal [pictured], Specialised Foundation Doctor, delivered a seminar for the medical students, and Dr. Genever Morgan, Dr. James Anderson and Ms. Christine Pye delivered an equivalent session for the veterinary students.
Thank you
We would again like to thank all our attendees, presenters, our UCLan and Keele collaborators and INSPIRE. Additionally, Dr. John Jenkins, the INSPIRE lead within the Medical School for all of his support. We hope you can join us again next year at LivResCon10!"