Poster success for WCMC-Q

April, 2012

The Sixth International Conference on Environmental Mutagens in Human Populations came to a conclusion with a WCMC-Q student and a Qatari researcher winning honors for their poster presentations.

One of the aims of the conference was to allow students and young scientists and researchers to interact with their more experienced peers. To do this they submitted posters of their work that delegates could then view and question.

The posters were judged and prizes for the best posters awarded during the closing ceremony. The eventual winner was WCMC-Q Pre-Medical student Vignesh Shanmugam, for his poster entitled “An Alternative Mechanism for Melatonin’s Protective Effects on Metal Ion Toxicity.”

Vignesh said one of the most difficult aspects was fitting all the relevant information onto the poster.

He said: “I was working for almost a year on the research so the challenge was putting all those results onto one piece of paper and explaining how the knowledge contributes to our scientific understanding.

“I didn’t expect to win. The thing about poster judging is that it’s so difficult for the judges but I’m happy that I could please them.”

In third place was Nawaf Al-Taweel, Nationals Training Program Coordinator at WCMC-Q, for the presentation entitled “Intracellular Calcium Modulators Modulate Cisplatin-Induced Calcium”.

Nawaf said the judges were pleased with the organization of his poster.

He added: “They said it had all the necessary components, the background and methodology – some were really impressed with the methods that we used.”