Thank you to all who attended and presented at the 3rd AUKCAR Annual Scientific Meeting back in November 2016. Held in Edinburgh, the meeting hosted Centre members from across 15 institutions and brought together world-leading asthma researchers to share ideas, progress and plans for the coming year.
Amongst the presenters we were privileged to have three excellent guest speakers. Professor Tari Haahtela, Head of the Allergy Department, Helsinki University Hospital, gave an engaging presentation on reducing the burden and tackling the causes of allergy and asthma. Dr Daniel Roggen, Reader in Sensor Technology at the University of Sussex, discussed cutting edge development in sensor technology; and Dr Charles Friedman, Chair of the Department of Learning Health Sciences, University of Michigan Medical School, joined us via video conference to share his expertise in Learning Health Systems.
Across the 2-day meeting we saw a wide variety of presentations and poster sessions from PhD students, early career researchers and Principle Investigators. Adam Peel, 2nd year PhD student based at Norwich Medical School, won the prize for best student presentation with his talk titled 8-Isoprostane in Exhaled Breath Condensate: A Systematic Review in Adult Asthma. (Adam has subsequently published a paper on this research in the Journal of Breath Research: Biomarkers in adult asthma: a systematic review of 8-isoprostane in exhaled breath condensate.)
The prize for best student poster was awarded to Mohammad Al-Sallakh, 3rd year PhD student based at Swansea University. (See images below showing Mohammad’s visually engaging poster, titled Making sense of patient-reported currently treated asthma using routinely collected data).
Central to the meeting was the presence of our Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) group, who volunteered their time to talk with researchers and students, providing valuable patient perspectives at all stages of the research process. Many thanks to our dedicated PPI group, who this year alone have collaborated on a wide variety of activities including facilitating science festival outreach activities, providing feedback on study findings and helping PhD students design study questionnaires. Visit the PPI section of the website for more information about the group including how to get involved.
Finally, sincere thanks from all of us at the Centre to our International Advisory Board (IAB) who travelled from across the US and Europe to share their international perspective on asthma research. This was hugely valuable to researchers across the Centre and we look forward to hosting the IAB again at our 4th annual scientific meeting next year.
