Medical Sciences students Clare Davis and Madie Eve

Placement students present work at prestigious neuroscience conference

Two placement year students have presented their work at a prominent international neuroscience conference.

Clare Davis and Madie Eve, both Medical Sciences students going into their final year, presented their work at a conference held by the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS). The FENS Forum of Neuroscience is the largest neuroscience conference in Europe.

Clare and Madie have been undertaking a professional training year (PTY) at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital’s RILD building, under the supervision of lecturers Dr Asami Oguro-Ando and Dr John Chilton.

Much of the students’ work on the placement has focused on autism spectrum disorder, one of Dr Oguro-Ando’s research focuses. They worked on their own research topic with Dr Rosie Bamford, investigating genes which are thought to play a role in autism using a genome editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9., as well as molecular cellular biological techniques.

Clare and Madie were awarded a grant from the Dean’s Individual Career Development Fund to attend the international meeting, which was held in Berlin in July. Both students presented posters and gave presentations at the conference.

Dr Oguro-Ando said: “This is a fantastic achievement by Madie and Clare. They joined the team for 9 months, having no previous lab experience, and have been able to present their posters at this prestigious international meeting. Amazing! I’m sure other students will be encouraged by it and we’ll have more hardworking placement students joining us in the near future!”

Dr Chilton said: “Clare and Madie worked really hard all year and thoroughly deserved this chance to present their work to an international audience. The experience will stand them in good stead for their future careers.”

Madie said: “I was lucky to have a stream of visitors to my poster, each asking thought-provoking questions. It was a privilege to meet students from across the world who were working on the same area of research. Overall the conference was a fantastic experience!”

Clare said: “I really enjoyed the Forum of Neuroscience. It allowed me to gain a broader understanding of autism and see first-hand the varied neuroscience research taking place across the world.”

Date: 22 January 2019