Hafeeza Ayuoob & Vytautas Kontrimas
University of Reading, UK

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.101.20

6–8 July 2015,
Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, UK

This year Cardiff was the central hub for physiologists from all over the world hosting an internationally acclaimed Physiology 2015 symposium. The conference held at Motorpoint arena enabled us to learn and understand various research areas as well as gave the opportunity to present our work. Additionally, it was an excellent chance to get updated about recent findings and advancements in cardiovascular, metabolism, neuroscience and many other fields.

The public lecture presented by Sophie Scott was titled  ‘The science of laughter‘. It gave us an insight into the evolution of laughter and how certain emotions appear to be interpreted universally. The talk was also a great example of how complex information can be transformed into a charming and easy to follow lecture. After this lecture we felt motivated to become better communicators, which is an important aspect for pharmacists.

We were also given the opportunity to communicate our own summer research project during the poster session on the last day. Our research was based on carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide gases and their role in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. We found this to be a very key moment of the conference enabling us to develop interpersonal skills such as communication, which also increased our confidence. Unexpected questions and observations from physiologists propelled a range of new ideas and perspectives regarding our research. Overall it was a challenging but without a doubt an invaluable experience.

In addition, we were lucky enough to explore and see other posters that were displayed. The range of posters and depth of knowledge everyone had was outstanding. One poster in particular we found to be quite interesting. It revealed that simvastatin could be useful for hypertensive patients by improving endothelial cell function of blood vessels within the brain and reversing the loss of capillary density. We kept coming back to this poster as this was very new and certainly useful in our future career as pharmacists. Yet another poster highlighted an importance of glycolysis metabolite methylglyoxal in Type 1 diabetes and especially its complications such as neuropathy and nephropathy.

As an undergraduate, Physiology 2015 provided a great platform for networking due to the diverse audience, ranging from professional researchers to PhD students from all over the world. It allowed us to appreciate the scope of knowledge gained throughout our pharmacy studies and summer research project.

Meeting both PhD students and research scientists was an outstanding opportunity to explore possible pharmacy career paths in particular medical writing or industrial pharmacy.

It is beyond a doubt that this was an amazing, memorable and insightful experience, which will be applicable in our future as pharmacists.

Lastly, we would like to thank University of Reading, The Physiology Society and The Alzheimer’s Society for giving us the opportunity to complete the summer projects and present our findings. Also, we would like to thank our project supervisor Dr Mark Dallas for all the support and encouragement he has given us throughout.