I am very grateful to have been awarded the BALR ATS travel award, which supported my attendance to the ATS Conference 2023, held in Washington, DC. It was my first time attending the ATS conference. I had the opportunity to present my PhD work in a poster discussion session, titled ‘Linking biology to the real world in asthma and allergic inflammation’. It was a great experience as this consisted of a poster viewing period, followed by a flash 1 minute summary of my findings and a discussion period regarding the themes of the posters present. It was very encouraging to have my work generate interest amongst senior and early career researchers and to receive valuable feedback that will be useful for the next steps of my project and final publication.
The conference overall was a great meeting, with a wide range of sessions including symposia, thematic posters and poster discussion sessions. I enjoyed hearing about the ongoing research in respiratory topics as well as networking and meeting with other researchers. There were some interesting sessions in asthma, which is my primary interest as my project focuses on the role of mitochondrial function in severe eosinophilic asthma. A range of asthma topics were discussed such as the effect of different metabolic pathways, immune cell interactions and clinical biomarkers. I also gained knowledge about mitochondrial function in other cell types and respiratory diseases such as COPD. There was a very informative rapid abstract poster discussion session on biologic therapies in severe eosinophilic asthma. It was very insightful to hear other researchers’ views on the current stance in biologic therapy, particularly as myself and other members of my group are involved in research in this area.
I would like to thank BALR once again for supporting my attendance to the ATS. I thoroughly enjoyed it, made connections with people, and felt inspired listening to experts within the respiratory field. I left feeling motivated to continue with my research.
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