I’m going to Kuala Lumpur in a few weeks! I’ve been accepted to present a poster at the 18th Biological Sciences Graduate Congress. At first I was a little skeptical about doing a poster and not a talk, but I think I will enjoy the poster sessions more than speaking in front of a group of people.
I especially enjoyed the process of designing my poster. It took a last minute push to get some things together, but I’m happy with it overall and I DID NOT use Powerpoint to make my poster. I hadn’t realized that many people use Powerpoint to design their posters until a few years ago when I was making a poster and my colleague asked me in an email to send him the ppt file. I used Omnigraffle, which was pretty easy to pick up since I had used Adobe Illustrator before. If you are not afraid of learning how to use a new piece of software and have a bit of time to get the hang of it, I highly recommend it or Adobe Illustrator. The posters come out looking a bit more pro!
This conference happens every year and is jointly put on by University of Malaya in Malaysia, National University of Singapore (NUS), and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. The location of the conference alternates between the 3 universities. Each university sends around 50 students in a few different areas of biology ranging from cell and molecular to biophysics to biodiversity and ecology. I’m going as part of the biodiversity group from NUS.
I’ve never participated in a graduate student conference, so it’ll be interesting to interact with peers and see what other people are working on. I am required to be present at my poster for 2 sessions each day, for the 2 days. Each session is about 45 minutes long, and I hope lots of people come to see my poster!
