Participating in a scientific conference can significantly enhance your scientific career in several ways. To shed light on the additional value it brings, we reached out to a selection of our speakers and attendees from 2023. Their insights are shared below, and to delve deeper, we’ve included a video interview featuring several participants at the conclusion of this article.
Dana Pe'er
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, US | Speaker at THPT23
"Conferences trigger my ideas. Hearing a talk in person, it triggers my ideas in a way a 2D screen doesn’t. And then the lunch, I mean the random conversations with people. I really think that conferences are all about interactions, both me responding to the talk and the hallway conversations, which really trigger my next ideas. I’m bubbling with ideas. "
Chris Marine
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, BE | OC Member at THPT23
"Attending conferences is really an essential cornerstone of the whole process of research. It’s where you meet scientists. You can discuss topics not only when people are presenting but also after. When we have coffee breaks, a lot of things are being discussed. And ideas and collaboration set up. It’s really an essential part of the whole process."
Claudia M. Brenis
VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE | Poster presenter at THPT23
"I’m interested in networking with different researchers. For me, the most important is to know the latest data and also be able to talk about your own research with different people on your own level but also with higher levels with more experience. And I look forward to meeting new people to set up collaborations for my own research on mouse data."
Linqian Weng
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, BE | Poster presenter at THPT23
"Conferences allow me to have good connections to different students, PhD, Post-Doc, and also some PIs if you want to. They are easy to approach in a friendly environment. There are several interesting talks that gave me many ideas to think about my own project and helped me explore and dig deeper into my own research. The reason I presented a poster is so people come to me and give me suggestions and ideas on what they think about my poster. In general, it’s really nice to get something from people, and I can also go to people to give them my ideas. It’s a nice interaction between different people."
Amelie Franken
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, BE | Poster presenter at THPT23
"Attending conferences allows me to show my research to a global audience and to receive some feedback. But also to see the research of others and potentially try to collaborate if they have a similar topic or technologies that we’re also using. Conferences give you a stage in a way that shows what you’re doing. It also helps you if you find people who also know a lot about your topic to give you some guidance. The talks are super interesting to see what others are doing before it’s even published. So you get an idea where the field is going."
Christopher Glass
University of California, San Diego, US | Speaker at EMDS2023
"For me, conferences are crucial. The thing that had the biggest impact on me during COVID was that there weren’t conferences or the fact that they turned into a virtual mode. That worked a little bit, but for me, it really had a major impact on how I absorb what is going on in the field around me. There are so many things about a virtual conference that you don’t really get when you are actually sitting here. For example, I was sitting next to Ken Murphy during the last session, and he told me a whole bunch of things that were super interesting and important that I would not have gotten in a Zoom-based conference. So I think the ability to get together and speak to people and be able to interact dynamically is so important. This meeting certainly fulfills my expectations for that."
Charlotte Scott
VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE | OC member at EMDS2023
"I think conferences play an absolutely crucial role. You’re coming to these meetings, and you’re seeing the unpublished data, and you’re getting new ideas. I mean, I’ve been posting on Twitter the whole time we’ve been here. There are about 4 or 5 people I wanna set up collaborations with, and that doesn’t happen from reading the papers. Being here and having those interactions is where the magic happens."
Beth Stevens
Boston Children's Hospital; Broad Institute; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Harvard University, US | Speaker at PBIC23
"Attending conferences is critical not only for the scientific exchange of ideas but also for networking, collaboration, and fostering new ideas. A lot of the things that stem from even informal discussions during the coffee breaks have really sparked some new collaborative projects, at least in my lab. It’s also super important for our trainees to have an opportunity to meet the people in the field that they are reading about and reading their papers but never met in person. This can lead to new Post-Doc opportunities and training opportunities. It’s been fantastic coming together in person, especially after the pandemic, is just been really important. We missed that, and I think this meeting is particularly good timing."
Daan Verhaege
VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE | Poster presenter at PBIC23
"The conference so far was really amazing. We have a bunch of top-level scientists and PIs joining from all over the world, and they were sharing a lot of unpublished data. There were a lot of discussions, with people suggesting new ideas. That’s what good conferences are all about."
Roosmarijn Vandenbroucke
VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE | OC member at PBIC23
"At conferences, you really have personal contact with the people that you haven’t met before. So it has a huge impact on really getting to know more people in the field you’re working in. It’s really important in the career of a researcher to be able to do this."
