Podcast – ARUK Conference Roundup 2022

Voiceover:

Welcome to the NIHR Dementia Researcher podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, supporting early career dementia researchers across the world.

Dr Katy Bray:

Hello, my name is Dr. Katy Bray, and I am public engagement manager at Alzheimer’s Research UK. And I’m delighted to be taking a turn at hosting this week’s Dementia Researcher podcast, recording on location from The Brighton Centre and sharing our guests’ highlights from this year’s Alzheimer’s Research UK conference.

Dr Katy Bray:

So, the Alzheimer’s Research UK conference is running as a hybrid conference for the first time, with around 600 delegates joining across the online platform and in person. As you probably know, two years ago, like many conferences we had to cancel due to the emerging pandemic. And last year we held the conference on a purely online platform. So, it’s been fantastic to get dementia researchers together again, and we’ve seen some joyful reunions over the past two days, while also taking some important moments to remember colleagues who are no longer with us. Monday was the early careers day, with the main conference over the last two days. We’ve had a range of topics covered, and so I’m looking forward to our discussion over the next half hour or so about what we’ve heard.

Dr Katy Bray:

And I’m delighted to be joined by a great panel today, so we have Josh Harvey, Beth Eyer, Dr. Mike Daniels, and Sophie Sanford. So, hello everyone, thank you for joining me. So, shall we start off with some introductions around the table? So, looking in order around the table, Beth, if I come to you first.

Beth Eyre:

Hi everyone. I am Beth Eyre, and I’m a third year PhD student at the University of Sheffield. I’m based in the department of psychology, but my PhD spans psychology and neuroscience. And I look at an important mechanism called neurovascular coupling in Alzheimer’s disease and in co-morbid mixed models.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Over to you, Mike.

Dr Mike Daniels:

Hi everyone. I’m Mike Daniels, I’m a post-doc working with Dr. Barry McColl in the University of Edinburgh, and I’m also in the UK Dementia Research Institute. And I’m really interested in microglia, which a lot of people will have heard of, the immune cells of the brain parenchyma. Really interested in what microglia do, what they do in Alzheimer’s disease, and what we can do to change them if we need to.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Over to you, Josh.

Josh Harvey:

Hi, my name is Josh Harvey, I’m a PhD student at the University of Exeter in the complex disease epigenetics group. My supervisor’s Professor Katie Lunnon. Primarily I’m interested in dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease and looking at epigenetics as a way to explain changes that we see across the disease process.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Thank you. And last but not least, Sophie.

Sophie Sanford:

Hi, I’m Sophie, I’m a third year PhD student at the UK Dementia Research Institute in Cambridge. I’m in the group of Dr. William McEwan, and we’re looking at antiviral immunity in models of Alzheimer’s disease. So specifically, what the role of antiviral immunity might be in the aggregation of tau protein. And really great be here.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Thank you. So, before we get into the meat of the topic, have you all had posters or given talks of some sort? I think we’ve had two of you presented at the early careers day, I think. And Mike, have you had a poster?

Dr Mike Daniels:

Embarrassingly, no.

Dr Katy Bray:

Oh, sorry.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And now everyone knows about it. No, I unfortunately did not bring a poster and I think you are maybe the 18th person to ask me if I have a poster here, and quite rightly, I am for shame for not bringing one, which is really, really bad. But I’m happy to talk about what I would present in my poster. It would be probably my, my work on a gene that I work on called Cst7, which is involved in microglial lysosomes, which are like little stomachs of the microglia. And essentially, we know this gene is up-regulated in microglia in Alzheimer’s disease, mainly in mice, but also to some extent in humans, but no one knows what it does.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And this happens a lot in research, people show genes go up, they show markers might be up-regulated, and then they just say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And I really want to know why it’s being up-regulated, because you’d assume it goes up for a reason. And so, I’ve knocked it out, and very, very long story short, it does different things in males versus females, almost completely opposite things. And it does quite a lot of things. So, it’s quite interesting, but yeah, unfortunately didn’t manage to put it on a poster, which I definitely should have done.

Dr Katy Bray:

That’s all right. Well, maybe next year?

Dr Mike Daniels:

Hope so.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah. Good, good. How about you, Sophie? Do you have a poster?

Sophie Sanford:

Yeah, I had my first poster. My first real in-person poster. Only took three years. But it was really nice to meet people and I found some other people researching fairly similar things. And Michael Coleman on the ECR day recommended us, Professor Michael Coleman recommended that we pounce on people, grab them to get them to listen to us talk. And that’s what I tried to do. And it was really, really good.

Dr Katy Bray:

Oh, fab. Yeah, the pouncing is always the most nerve-wracking bit when you’re standing by that poster, just hoping for a kind face to come around the corner. So that’s great to hear. And Josh and Beth, I know you both presented. Who wants to go first?

Josh Harvey:

I can jump in. Yes, I presented some work we’ve been doing in collaboration with a group in the Netherlands at the University of Maastricht, looking at machine learning based prediction of cognitive change in Parkinson’s disease, testing a whole host of different variables to see if these algorithms can tease out predictive features which may tell which patients will or will not develop cognitive impairment.

Dr Katy Bray:

Interesting. And Beth.

Beth Eyre:

So, I presented a bit of an overview of what I’ve been doing for the past two and a half years where I’ve literally been in a dark room for so long. And I specifically focused on one of the imaging methods that I’ve been using, which is something called 2D optical imaging spectroscopy, which basically is a fancy way of saying that we look at light. We use light to look at changes in hemoglobin levels to a sensory stimulation. So, we use a whisker stimulation in animal models, and we have different diseases, and we essentially showed that with neurovascular function, so to this whisker stimulation, and then you get this increase in blood volume to the same brain region. That was preserved in the Alzheimer’s model compared to the wild type, the atherosclerosis was actually reduced. And the mix, so that was atherosclerosis and the Alzheimer’s together, was also similar to the wild type.

Beth Eyre:

So, we found some interesting things, and we’re trying to figure out what’s happening there. I’ve still got some analysis to do where I can look at the neural activity at the same time, so to get an idea of that neurovascular coupling relationship that I mentioned. But yeah, I think we’re just trying to figure out what’s going on. But it was really nice to show that to everyone. And I also talked about how the animals’ behavior can impact responses, because I do awake imaging, and just how the importance of monitoring locomotion, when and how much animals walk in relation to that whisker stimulation is really important if we’re going to use that sensory stimulation as a measure of neurovascular function.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. And we probably should mention, I know Beth is quite humble about this, but Beth did win the Laura Pulford prize, which is the award for the best talk on the early careers day. So little silent round of applause for Beth for doing that. Yeah. Fantastic. So, on the first day, on the Monday, what stood out for you? Was there anything that you particularly enjoyed? What was your highlight of the day?

Beth Eyre:

I’ll jump in. So, Monday was the ECR day if I’m correct. It’s been quite a long three days when you’ve not really socialized in two years. I really liked, and I think I’ve mentioned this to Adam in another podcast, I really liked the playing to your strength’s session. Because I was talking to another PhD researcher, and you don’t always consider what your strengths are. I think you sometimes just get in the routine of right, you’re going to uni, you’re doing your experiments, you’re writing up, you’re analyzing, and you’re just doing your job, right? And just trying to think, “Oh, well actually I really enjoy this, and actually I do excel at this,” and I think sometimes it’s hard for us to tell ourselves that we’re doing a good job, but I think as an ECR, I think it’s a really important to be like, “Oh, I’m good at this. I should showcase that a bit more.”

Beth Eyre:

And the whole aspect of doing side projects I thought was really interesting, because I always just thought side projects were just about data analysis where your supervisors were like, “Do you want to do a bit more data on something else?” But actually, seeing that you can do things blog writing or some things on social media or volunteering was really nice that that was incorporated into the sessions.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Yeah, I think understanding your strengths is not just good for researchers, but just in general any role that you end up afterwards, if you think about the things that, as they said, people come to you for these sorts of things all the time, you’ve realize that’s because you’re seen as having a strength there. So yeah, a very positive message I think to come out of that one. Anyone else for their highlights from Monday?

Dr Mike Daniels:

Yeah, I’ll go. I found the session on publishing very interesting. So, we had speakers mainly from Springer Nature journals come in and talk about the way that their editorial process works. Some of the differences between journals that I thought ran editorially very similarly, turns out they run very differently in an editorial way. And a little bit about peer review. The good thing about it is it was really well chaired, and what was cool was that they were to some extent being, I’m going to say held to account. Sounds a little bit aggressive, but there’s maybe a lot of frustration, I think, at the researcher level about especially the for-profit publishing journals and those big companies.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And they were honest in the way they answered the questions, and the questions generally speaking were asked directly to the people working for these journals, and they tried to answer them. So, it was good. Sometimes that’s an elephant in the room I think that actually everyone just brushes under the carpet and says, “That’s the way it is. We got to get on with it.” And it was great to actually have a session where we were trying to address that. And then hopefully the things that need to change will change.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Yeah. A lot of movement towards a better future in a lot of the topics I think on Monday, weren’t there?

Sophie Sanford:

I definitely think in this conference, I really felt like ARUK really is trying to care about ECRs, and there was a session on mental wellbeing as well. And I think it is important to talk about this stuff as ECRs, and I think it speaks to the fact that we all really care, that we do want to do good research, and so we need the things that are set up around us to help us do that. And I think it was really nice to talk about that in the ECR day.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah. Fab. And I should probably say actually, it’s a good time to plug our new early career researcher portal, which has lots more, and we’ll have a building and growing amount of support and information and training and opportunities and mentoring. So, for anyone listening, there’s a chance to sign up for our mentoring scheme through our research network before the end of March. And that’s for UK based researchers initially. But yeah, do check that out, because it’s going to be great. I’ve just decided.

Beth Eyre:

Just to second that, I think ARUK have made me personally as an ECR feel so supported these past three days. And I think that echoes around everyone I speak to. And I think I mentioned it to someone, again probably Adam on a podcast or something, and we were just saying it’s a nice safe space to present your work. Because a lot of us who are here are coming towards the ends of our PhD training and we’ve not done anything like this before, and presenting to people’s a massive thing, and even just going into speaking to another supervisor or another top professor, it’s quite daunting when you’re really new. And I think the new framework that ARUK have got going on is pretty awesome. And it’s nice to have a funding body and a charity care about the people, not just the work that we do.

Dr Katy Bray:

Actually, on that safe space concept, I guess one of the things that we’ve seen happen because we’ve held this conference hybrid is that everyone submits questions via Slido. So that means that people watching at home can equally participate. But actually, I almost feel it makes it less daunting as an early career researcher to ask questions. Have you guys felt you’ve been able to ask questions?

Josh Harvey:

It’s literally a note that I have down here is that was one of my preferred things. I think as an ECR new to presenting, one of the anxieties you can have in your head is being asked a really difficult, confronting question by someone within the audience, one that starts with, “Oh, it’s more of a comment than a question really.” And having that face of the chair in between the question portal and the ECR really helped lessen that gap to actually presenting.

Dr Katy Bray:

Actually, that’s a good point. The chair is then filtering, and so all those, “It’s more of a comment,” yeah, they don’t get said. So actually, if that person does have a comment, they can come find you.

Josh Harvey:

Yeah. Exactly.

Dr Katy Bray:

And stand up and talk to you directly.

Dr Mike Daniels:

I would love to see statistics on doing it this way, how many PhD students ask questions in the main conference compared to without that, the in-person way. Because most conferences, you get the ECR day and then all the ECRs ask each other questions and it’s really open and it’s really collaborative, and people are like, “Oh yeah, I tried that thing, it didn’t work for me either,” and stuff like that. And it gets to the main conference, and you get the big dog PIs presenting these amazing stories from 15 years’ worth of work in the lab. And it’s unbelievable to see, but it’s hard to identify with, I think for one level, as a student or an ECR. And also, the questions entirely get asked by other big dog PIs, and the PhD students hardly ever ask questions. And I think that probably hasn’t happened this time around because of the using the app. So, I think it’s been good.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah, I’m sure that’s something that we can evaluate. So, everyone who comes to conferences is probably well used to filling in feedback forms, and as somebody who often writes those feedback forms, I do encourage you to fill them out because they do actually help shape how we do things moving forward. All right, so moving on to the main bit of the conference. So that has been all of yesterday and we’re at lunchtime today, so there’s still some more to come. Has anyone had any standout favorite sessions so far from the last day and a half?

Josh Harvey:

I can jump in from this morning, just because it’s still fresh in the mind. I think Dr. Nicholas Ashton’s talk this morning, I think it was the first one from the University of Gothenburg, was really, really cool and very exciting, looking at blood biomarkers and novel phospho-tau markers for cognitive decline in AD. And the leaps and bounds that that field has come in the past few years are really exciting, and I think really immediate for direct patient change.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Yeah, I sadly missed that, I was still registering everybody at the door, but I’ve heard Nick talk before and he’s fantastic. So yeah, great to hear updates on that.

Sophie Sanford:

You’ve actually stolen my one.

Josh Harvey:

Sorry.

Sophie Sanford:

[crosstalk 00:15:31]. I think it was really good because he highlighted what blood biomarkers for tau can and can’t say as well. He did make sure to say we can give a binary measure, and at the moment it’s not very good at correlating severity with the blood biomarkers for tau. And also raise things like we now need to study the metabolism of tau in things blood and how different lifestyles and different comorbidities can affect that. And yeah, really good to get an idea of that current field of high sensitivity, early detection for dementia.

Dr Katy Bray:

How about you, Mike? I know you’ve got some things you’ve enjoyed.

Dr Mike Daniels:

Yeah. I mean, this is this probably not going to be hugely surprising because I’m a glial biologist, so I particularly the liked glial session, but I really, really enjoyed the talk from Alexej Verkhratsky. This conference has been quite well set up with the sessions often being opened by somebody who gives a real overview, somebody who’s been in the field for quite a long time, giving an overview of basically the state of play at the field.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And that talk was amazing for a couple of reasons, I think. One is that he challenged, I think, the field to some extent, which is really, really great to see from somebody that’s been in it so long. Sometimes fields stagnate when main people are in them for so long, and he’s challenging it and suggesting really that these diseases, like Alzheimer’s disease, where we see glial activation or glial changes, isn’t standard neuro inflammation that people talk about, and actually maybe it’s glial paralysis. And that’s something that we are looking into as well, and I think it’s becoming more and more apparent that might be what’s happening. And that’s really cool to see him talk about that.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And also really, really interesting for him to talk about different ways of investigating glia. For example, he used the example of the stain called GFAP, which people use to stain astrocytes, and maybe how you can’t necessarily interpret it in the way that a lot of people interpret it. And I think that’s really, really important. And yeah, really, really good talk. Included some Latin, which he never actually translated. It was a little bit, I thought, “Maybe, do I need to know Latin to be able to research this?” But really, really cool.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. How about you, Beth?

Beth Eyre:

So, my favorite talk was from yesterday, and it was from Dr. Ian Harrison, and he was talking about glymphatics and tau. I think glymphatics is a really interesting area, any clearance pathway, because there’s a couple, and obviously there’s some contradictions between them and not fights between them, but there’s definite sides about what people believe and what people don’t believe. And I just think any clearance pathway is super interesting. And I remember reading Ian’s paper actually, and I bumped him, and I overheard him talking about the work and I was like, “Oh, that’s you, I read that paper and I really enjoyed that.”

Beth Eyre:

And yeah, just seeing how they research the glymphatics and how they use the; if I get this right, I hope I do; where they get the tau brain and then they homogenize it and then they inject the tau. And I just think that is awesome. The person who came up with that, it’s quite just cool science. And I was chatting to Ian’s postdoc; I think it’s Douglas Lopez, I hope I’ve got that right; about this and asking more about why they do that and some of the other methods they’d use, and it was just really fascinating, the work that they were doing and how they were answering those questions. And I think glymphatics is a really interesting area, and I think there’ll be a lot of, with both glymphatics and other clearance pathways, I think there’ll be a lot going on in the next couple of years with that. So, it’ll be nice to see some more future stuff, because they said they’ve got some more data that they’re analyzing right now. So, I can’t wait for another paper or another talk or something from that group.

Dr Katy Bray:

That’s always one of the really exciting things about conferences is that touchpoint with different researchers to see how bits are moving along that aren’t always really close to what you do, but you’re really interested in them, and you can get that touchpoint.

Dr Katy Bray:

I really enjoyed Johannes Attems from Newcastle spoke yesterday and he was talking about, so they used post-mortem brain tissue to look at pathology, and he was talking about mixed pathology and how actually there’s different types of mixed pathology and one might be predominant, or it might be both actually, or multiple are really strong. I just found that very, very interesting, because I guess it’s one of the challenges, we face with a lot of these different diseases is we have clinical symptoms and we have pathology and it’s all very confusing still. And actually, the more work in this area where we can try and understand it and tease apart some of the… Maybe find some clear water in it and understand can be really, really valuable.

Dr Katy Bray:

And also, I loved it because he used tissue from Brains for Dementia Research, so I’m going to plug that now because I also work on that project. So, if anybody’s ever thinking of doing post-mortem brain tissue work or even just wants to access data, they also have cognitive data that’s taken yearly in these samples. So, it’s a really good resource, and I think we could shout about it way more than we do. So do check out Brains for Dementia Research. That’s my plug done, pat on the back. How about posters? Were there any particular posters people have enjoyed?

Sophie Sanford:

There was a poster and ECL talk that I really enjoyed, Nina Stoeberl, I think I that’s how you pronounce it. She was looking at IPSC models of microglia, and she’d had a mutant huntingtin microglia, IPSC microglia, and then corrected that gene so that one of them had the normal microglia. And it just makes you realize the microglia really do behave differently when they have a mutated huntingtin, and just was something I didn’t really think about in terms of how they might behave differently in an immune context outside of neurons. And she gave a really nice, clear talk, and really had really nice progression, and really liked her poster as well.

Dr Katy Bray:

Very good.

Josh Harvey:

I have to be upfront to begin with that the guy I have in mind, Sam Washer, is a personal friend, so there’s a level of bias going into this. But I think regardless of this, I would be choosing this poster. It’s also around microglial IPSCs, and he’s done a really interesting piece of work characterizing different media to grow these microglia and then characterize them very thoroughly using single cell RNA sequencing, essentially making that profile as similar as you can to true microglia that you observe in the primary tissue. And I just think that’s a really, really neat approach.

Dr Katy Bray:

It seems like there’s more and more and more IPSCs; so induced pluripotent stem cells, for those who haven’t come across the acronym for; there’s more and more of that happening, it seems, across the board. Are there any other themes that you’ve seen emerging at the conference?

Beth Eyre:

I think transcriptomics if I’ve said that right. This is totally not my field, and I think something to do with RNA sequencing is to do with that. Yeah, I feel like I’m seeing a lot more of that, and I think the way methods have come along in the past even five to 10 years, it’s incredible what you can do now. And even just thinking of all the GWAS stuff, the genome-wide association studies, it’s amazing what we can actually do now. I think sometimes there’s so much data you don’t actually know what to do with it sometimes. And it’s nice to be in a position where we have all these methods and there’s lots we can do to try and figure out and understand the diseases that cause dementia more. I think that’s great.

Beth Eyre:

Just to plug another poster, I really enjoyed Dr. Ann Go’s poster, which was two-photon imaging in hippocampal place cells. I really liked the methods they were using, two-photon, and taking a little bit of cortex. So actually, imaging the hippocampus, and the hippocampus is quite deep down, so it was really interesting to see how that could be imaged with the two-photon and then doing behavioral data as well. I thought that was pretty awesome.

Dr Katy Bray:

Anything from you, Mike? Posters or themes?

Dr Mike Daniels:

Yeah, unfortunately my favorite poster was also the microglia IPSC poster. So that’s all you need to know about themes that we’ve picked up, which is maybe not necessarily a great thing. But yeah, I was fortunate enough to have pretty much a whole lab around a poster that they all contributed to. And Hazel Hall-Roberts is the first author on that poster in Julie Williams’ lab in Cardiff. But all the rest of the lab were there, and we just spent about 20 minutes stood around this poster, chatting about exactly what they were doing and offering pieces of advice for how to do it.

Dr Mike Daniels:

So, what their study is, and I think this is such a good idea, is that they’re basically assessing polygenic risk score. So polygenic risk score is when you might not have a single gene that drives an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease or even a couple, but you have tons of different genes and all together they have very small individual effects and that comes in to make a very big effect to increase your risk or decrease your risk. And so, what they’re trying to do is model that in the cells that most of these genes tend to be expressed in, and that is microglial cells. And then they’re just setting up this big screening platform. And they’re just saying, how do microglia function? Do they take up things differently? Do they secrete things differently? Do they move differently? Are they different shapes and sizes? And I think it’s a really, really good idea to just run through this big screening platform.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And then their aim, which I also think is amazing, is to run through this platform, and then when they get some interesting things come out, they’re being super collaborative about how they’re doing stuff and they’re going to go, “Okay, look, here you go. We found this amazing thing,” let someone else might be an expert in that particular aspect of microglial biology, and then they’ll go away and investigate it in more detail. And I think that’s potentially going to be extremely powerful and I hope it really works out.

Dr Katy Bray:

I’ve got to say, I feel like collaboration has really gone up a notch because of the pandemic, which might almost sound counterintuitive, but I think people have had to be much more intentional around their interactions. And then having moments like this, where people can come together and have those more spontaneous and actually make new connections, hopefully then we’ll continue to see that grow.

Dr Katy Bray:

But I know it’s something we’ve heard quite a lot about because we’ve had a number of tributes to Stuart Pickering-Brown, who sadly passed away, and lots of people talking about his approach to being a scientist. And not necessarily things that he actively went out and told people to do, but just the way he conducted himself and his lab and the really positive way of behaving in a certain way. So, people talking about how he was very trusting and open in sharing the ongoing research, which is fantastic because we don’t want those days of people being hidden away and don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing, because actually the more we can share the faster progress can happen.

Dr Mike Daniels:

Yeah. And I worked little bit with Stuart, and my main memory of him actually is walking back from when ARUK was in Manchester and there’d just been some of his FTD work had been presented, and I was a second year PhD student, I think at that point. And well back in, I just said thinking out loud more than anything, “I wonder what’s known about inflammation, broadly inflammation and microglial reactivity in that disease.” And Stuart was like, “Not much, and you should do it.” And totally right that he was like, “That’s something that you should absolutely be thinking about writing fellowships on, I think it’d be really good for you to do.” And I barely, we did not speak very often, and he just knew that I was on the floor, and he was like, “That is a really interesting thing that science need to know, and I reckon you could do it.” And yeah, it was just really, really nice. And I think that’s something that’s resonating with a lot of people at the moment.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah. There were some other things like knowing your strengths and having confidence in them, which I guess also came through on the early careers day. And loving what you do, but finding that balance, which I think everyone struggles with, whether you’re a researcher or not, finding that balance is really key. And I think the biggest challenge, and I don’t think I’m any good at this, is don’t worry about the things that you can’t control. So, once you’ve submitted that paper or that grant it’s out of your control, so just let it be. So, some really, really positive messages coming through from that. Continuing on the very positive theme, with Beth, with your little award win for your talk, I wonder if we want to chat about any top tips for approaching attending a conference, if you’re presenting a poster or presenting a talk, what would be your golden tips for that?

Beth Eyre:

I think the first one would be just assuming the audience know nothing about what you’re talking about, because I think as scientists because we’re so in our own bubbles, I think we think everyone knows exactly what we do or what things are. And I try and pretend that people don’t know anything what I do. And I just try and explain things in the clearest way possible, with the fewest levels of technical jargon. And I try and I’ll say it to people at home or people who aren’t in science, and if they can get it, that’s where I know I’ve pitched it correctly.

Beth Eyre:

The second thing I would say is if you don’t need to use text, please don’t use it. No, no, no, I think text definitely is important in presentations, but I think less is definitely more. And I think it’s nice to use illustrations because they can engage your audience and you can then also be more engaging because you’re the presentation as well as your slides. Your slides are your aid, but you are the presentation. And I think sometimes if you’ve got quite a bit of text, people might be wanting to read that and not focusing on you. And sometimes we don’t want people to focus on us because it’s so nerve wracking when you get up there, but I think actually if you can show your passion and I guess flair was the whole point of the award for what you do, I think that really comes across to people.

Beth Eyre:

And finally, I think practice, like for me, I like to practice things to within an inch of their life. I like to be as prepared as I can be for anything I do. So yeah, just practicing it and practicing it to other people and practicing trying and stay on time I think is a good one.

Dr Katy Bray:

It’s always good to have a critical friend who can say, “It’s good, but there’s some things you could do.” You don’t just want lots of people going, “Wonderful, just keep doing that,” because then you don’t change, and you don’t learn.

Beth Eyre:

Exactly. Yeah. I think it’s nice to have either your lab group or someone who you can just present it to at home or whatever to say, “Oh, this was good. I really liked this. But this is what you could do, and this would make it better.” Exactly like you said, Katy, because like you say, you can’t improve if you don’t get any feedback.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah.

Sophie Sanford:

It was so well deserved.

Beth Eyre:

Thank you so much. Honestly, I’m so honored by it. I just did not expect it. And I was sat right at the back. I was like, “Oh no, I’ve got to walk all this way.” But yeah, no, everyone’s being so, so kind and so positive about it, and it’s so nice to get some recognition. I think as an early career researcher, you don’t always get that much recognition, especially when you’re first starting and you’re trying to get stuff out and things take time, and sometimes your confidence can be hit with experiments and stuff. So, it’s just, I think what ARUK have done with having the whole early careers day and all the talks and lots of different flash presentations as well throughout the whole conference, just allows ECRs to get that time to get that recognition from people and just to feel like you’re doing a good job.

Dr Katy Bray:

So, I’ll open to the others. So, any top tips for giving presentations, preparing posters, or just getting ready to come and be in person. So put trousers on maybe, if you’ve all been at home.

Josh Harvey:

I do think that’s a really good point though, because we’ve been doing it over Zoom for so long that presenting in person is a skill that I think has not been as practiced. And I think your point about practice is really important. I think ECRs really need to be able to seize as many opportunities as they can to share their research, whether that be in a formal talk setting or at conferences like this. So, I think attend and show face and really take these opportunities the best you can is definitely something that I’d say to ECRs.

Sophie Sanford:

I definitely learned how to try and summarize my poster in a very short amount of time, because if I was dragging people to my poster, I didn’t want to make them stay for 15 minutes. So, trying to summarize it concisely, really very much the elevator pitch style.

Dr Katy Bray:

Definitely. Know your elevator pitch, be ready, because actually you never know when it might be a potential next employer that you’re talking to. So yeah, impress them.

Dr Mike Daniels:

Yeah, I guess I would definitely echo presentation wise everything Beth said, which is good because she’s the pro, she would know better. But less is more being really key, and I think being key for posters as well, which Beth didn’t speak about specifically, but some absolutely amazing posters around were nice, big, clear introductions, handful of figures, key figures really showing what’s gone on, and then the main conclusion points. And I really like it. This is a really specific thing, but I really it when people number their results, so I know what order I’m supposed to be looking at this in, because sometimes you have to go down then back up, and sometimes you have to go across and then down. And some people don’t do that, and I never know where I’m supposed to be going at any one time. So, I guess that would be another thing.

Dr Mike Daniels:

But just science is all about enthusiasm for what you do. And I think that if you’re enthusiastic about what you do when you present, that comes across, which it did with what Beth did. If you’re enthusiastic about what you’re presenting with your posters, then that comes across, which is what Sophie’s done as well. And if you’re enthusiastic when you talk to other people about their posters, which is what I’ve done, because I don’t have my own poster, then that works out. You can’t go far wrong if you can keep your enthusiasm for what you’re doing, because what we’re doing is awesome. We’re lucky enough to get to work on something that’s so interesting to work on, and I think that really shines through.

Dr Katy Bray:

Fab. Yeah. And I know that because I work quite a lot with people affected by dementia and help them to find out more about research, and they get so much hope from the work that you’re doing. I think it’s really important to actually build you up with that, that you’re not just playing with some liquids in a lab, that actually it’s serving a bigger picture, a bigger purpose. So yeah, take hope and strength from that in yourselves. Maybe a couple more questions, just I’m aware that sessions will start soon and also don’t want this to be like four hours long for those of you listening. So, we’ve got a couple more sessions this afternoon. Is there anything left to come that you’re really looking forward to, or is it just you’re looking forward to going home?

Dr Mike Daniels:

Next session looks really good. I’m really looking forward to the next session. It’s on metabolic factors. I think that’s really fascinating, and I think that it’s arguably a little bit under studied, and really looking forward to seeing those talks, because I think they’re going to be really, really important.

Sophie Sanford:

I’m really looking forward to Dr. Maura Malpetti’s talk. So, we’ve seen actually a lot of Research Against Dementia fellows around, and as a young woman, it’s so inspiring to see them doing what they’re doing. And I had a little chat with her in the coffee break and it was really cool. And I’m looking forward to just seeing it up there.

Dr Katy Bray:

Very cool.

Beth Eyre:

Just to second that, I think seeing the Race Against Dementia fellows is awesome. I’ve not actually had a chance to speak to anyone yet, but that charity as well, and obviously it’s funded with ARUK. I think those fellowships are amazing, just the way they approach the problems that we all are trying to figure out. And like you say, it’s really inspiring to see lots of people doing it.

Sophie Sanford:

And throughout the conference, ECLs have been given one slot per session, which is, I think, a really good idea.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah. You want that good mix of the fresh, innovative thought and then those really nice overarching state of play of this area. If it’s not your area, you get a really clear sense of what’s exciting, what’s new, and what we know. Yeah. Very good. So, for the last question, so we’re all here sat around a table, which feels really novel after the past two years. So, what’s it been like being back in person? Has it been worth it, or do you want to go back home and just stay behind the computer?

Sophie Sanford:

No, it’s really, really good. Yeah.

Dr Katy Bray:

Everyone’s smiling, so…

Beth Eyre:

I think it was just nice to go somewhere new, and I think a couple of us are third year, and to not have done anything, this is my first national conference, and to actually meet… You see people on Twitter and stuff, and you see people online, but I think Sophie messaged me on Twitter and she’s like, “Oh, I’ve seen you on here, I loved your talk,” sort of thing. And it’s so nice to actually have those face-to-face connections with people. I think I follow you on Twitter. I follow everyone on Twitter, I’m one of those people like, “Hi!” But yeah, it’s nice to actually put faces to names and actually have conversations with people. And like Mike was saying about the enthusiasm for science, everyone’s so enthusiastic about what they do. And it’s nice to hear about what people have been doing. So yeah, it’s been fantastic.

Dr Mike Daniels:

Yeah. I’m greeting people that I feel like old friends, I’ve literally never seen before in real life. I’m like, “How are you doing? How are the kids?” And I’m like, “Hold on a second, we never met in person.” And it’s just been so, so nice. I’ve spent the whole conference just running around, trying to catch up with people that I’ve had the odd Zoom meeting with or follow-on Twitter and see what they’re up to. And yeah, it’s been amazing. I think I’ve probably traveled the furthest to get here out of all of us, and I would travel a lot further again to do this sort of thing again.

Dr Katy Bray:

Well, good news for you is next year, we’re up your neck of the woods in Aberdeen, so less far to travel. Still very far for everyone else though, but yeah.

Dr Mike Daniels:

Still quite far for me.

Josh Harvey:

Yeah. I mean, you really can’t replace the in-person experience. Actually, being able to meet ECRs and researchers from all across the UK has been just something you can’t get from that online experience. And I do really appreciate everything that ARUK did over that time, the online platform that you guys set up last year was fantastic, but it feels like a stop gap for what we’re really here for, and that’s to talk about our research and to make new connections and really develop the field. And yeah, it’s just great to be in person again.

Sophie Sanford:

And the serendipitous meetings, we met at a hotel breakfast.

Josh Harvey:

Yeah. Exactly.

Sophie Sanford:

Yeah. And Josh almost met me at lateral flows.

Josh Harvey:

Yeah, exactly.

Dr Katy Bray:

Yeah, you don’t get that coffee queue, lunch queues, you’re randomly standing next to somebody and then you just get chatting because you pass them a fork and then realize that you work on similar areas. So yeah, that is very difficult to recreate online.

Dr Mike Daniels:

And you the focus of having to do it, I don’t know about all you guys, but online conferences, I’m like, “Oh, I can do two things. I can write this thing and also attend the conference.” And then I end up neither listening to any of the conference nor writing the thing I really needed to write, and I should have just focused on that one thing. And just doing it in person just allows me to like, you’re here, you’re in the room, this is all what’s going on. I’m not thinking about all the experiments that I need to be running at the same time, all the stuff I need to write up. I’m just in the moment, and that makes it so much better.

Dr Katy Bray:

Wow. That’s a resounding success for being back in person. But I think we’ll keep it going hybrid, because I know a lot of people have been able to join online, and also it means that if you are here and you have missed out on stuff, you can probably watch it back as well. So very, very handy that way. So, I just want to thank all of our guests today for coming along. It’s been really good to chat with you, it’s been really lovely to be in person, and thank you so much for everything that you’ve shared and done over the past few days.

Dr Katy Bray:

So, for those of you listening, if you attended the conference and missed some of those talks, we hope you can seek them out on the online platform and catch up on them. If you didn’t book and can’t access those presentations, I hope our summaries were interesting. And I’m sure if you take a look on Twitter at the hashtag, which is #ARUKconf22, you will find lots of discussions and pictures of the posters and the talks that you missed. So do check that out.

Dr Katy Bray:

And so, it’s time to end today’s podcast recording. I’d like to thank our panelists, Beth, Mike, Josh, and Sophie. We have profiles of all of today’s panelists on the website, including details of their Twitter accounts and ways to get in contact with them. And I’m pretty sure they’ll be very happy for you to reach out if you have any questions or you want to pick up on anything they said. So, thank you for listening, and please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. It helps people find the podcast. And do tell us about your own work as well. Thank you, and goodbye.

Voiceover:

Brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, supporting early career dementia researchers across the world.

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