Posted on by johanne_marais

“If the brain does not work, the rest does not matter” –

– Professor Alfred K. Njamnshi, founder of Brain Research Africa Initiative

During a daily email scan on some day in May, I read that my research project had been accepted for a poster presentation at a conference I had applied to. Imagine that! For specialists, early career researchers, graduate students, and established professors alike, conferences offer an opportunity to touch base with current prospects (and persons) of a particular field.

Many anticipatory weeks and several hours of design later, I made my way to the venue – printed poster proudly in hand. Being socially anxious yet outspoken and opinionated (read: awkward), I felt a little uneasy about how the week would play out. Most of this was settled when I met a Twitter™ friend, Arish. We sat in the sun, exchanging warm parcels of chit-chat some hours before the first plenary speaker, Prof. Njamnshi, officially opened the conference.

My recounting of the conference is cherished in journal pages and short-hand notes. I could probably write a Master’s thesis on my experience. Though, in the absence of 150 pages available for my storytelling, I will offer you the abstract:

Introduction: Some 30-odd years ago, in Kenya’s city of Nairobi, the Society of Neuroscientists of Africa was registered. What began as a handful of African neuroscientists coming together to amplify African neuroscientific research has now grown so vastly that nearly 300 keen delegates are affiliated members of the society. Some of these delegates from 19 African countries – and 34 countries worldwide – congregated at the 16th Biennial International Conference of the Society of Neuroscientists of Africa (SONA), held in Johannesburg in the middle of July.

Aims: According to the society’s webpage, SONA aims “to promote research, teaching and advocacy in neuroscience in Africa…”. I arrived at the conference with my own aims, though. I intended to remain humble but secure in my knowledge basis, while being receptive to learning new topics unfamiliar to me. I sought to meet and engage with as many neuroscience enthusiasts from the continent as what my social capacity would permit, to begin forming my own “neural network” for collaborations and research support.

Methodologies: An array of symposia, workshops, poster presentations and communal meals gave attendees the opportunity to ask questions, share their work, rub shoulders with giants and shake hands with mentors and friends. The theme, “The Brain in Health and Disease: From Basic to Translational and Clinical Neurosciences”, stimulated provocative and challenging conversations across the multidisciplinary niches. Notebooks embellished with SONA aesthetics sat back-to-back with a printed program in each person’s complimentary tote bag, so that they could plan their preferences over the four days.

Results: From cell culture to measuring protein expression; patient-facing clinical research to data sharing… Neurosciences are diverse and expansive! The underlying message which unified all the sessions was the importance of shifting focus to research that was locally relevant but internationally applicable. Formal neuroscientific teaching now spans 70 % of the 54 African countries, and there was a conference-wide encouragement for teaching centres to continue boasting investigations by Africans, for Africans.

A broad contribution was made by researchers studying neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s; similarly, by those who work at the intersection of neurosciences and the immune system. Some important buzz terms that permeated the air were “neurodiplomacy”, “FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) brain data” and “neuroethics”.

Conclusion: As a postgraduate researcher, I have days where I feel in limbo: neither entirely a student nor a staff member. At the SONA conference, this felt different. Most people were less phased by using titles or the accolades that follow their name than they were about actively engaging with other attendees. By the final day, I was so diversely besotted with the neurosciences (and the neuroscientists) of the continent that the thought of following just one path to the future was entirely unsatisfying.

In the absence of clarity for the “what” question of research, I found myself re-establishing my answers to how; why and where. As Prof. Njamnshi implored, good science comes not from publishing papers but rather from having strong vision, acting on accomplishable goals, living with passion and creating a purpose. The aims of SONA – and my own – had been surpassed.  

Posted on by ncubekn

One more thing COVID-19 and lockdowns have changed drastically: Scientific conferences

Attendees at the 18th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology in Kyoto, Japan.

Conducting research can be one of the most laborious things for a person to do. It involves identifying gaps in the current body of knowledge and providing clues to various unanswered questions within a specific field. The approach differs slightly between various research specialties. In my field, Pharmacology, it involves reading a lot of scientific papers, planning and conducting of experiments, and ultimately publishing the obtained results in the form of journal articles and a Doctoral thesis. In all of this, there is one specifically exciting and rewarding part… sharing your findings with peers at scientific conferences.

Academic conferences are a platform where researchers meet to share research ideas and discoveries. This is usually done via oral presentations by senior researchers and presentations of posters by students. Conferences are a valuable platform that allow for collaboration and establishment of relations among academics. Typically, conferences run over a period of 4-5 days, and are a worthwhile experience, especially for young researchers.

Personally, attending conferences offered me an opportunity to travel out of the African continent for the first time. I got to travel to Lindau Germany to meet Nobel Prize winners. For any young scientist, being selected to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting is a huge privilege. Not only did I get to meet and have discussions with Nobel Laureates for the first time in my life, I also met and interacted and shared research experiences with PhD students from the most prestigious universities in the world. As a result of being selected for this meeting, I was featured in an article from the largest newspaper publishing in my city. As such, this meeting will remain a major highlight of my academic career.

From Germany, I immediately travelled to Japan to present my research findings at the 18th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. We had booked the return tickets to both countries during different times, and I had to first travel back to South Africa the whole day, and immediately connect to Hong Kong for a 14-hour flight, before taking another 4-hour flight to Japan. As you can imagine, I was fatigued when I got to Japan, but experiencing the difference in the landscape and way of life in Japan compared to Africa rendered the fatigue was worth it! I found one thing bizarre though, some individuals wore facial masks in public, are rare sighting in the South Africa at the time. It turns out, Japan has a long history of disease outbreaks, and with the current advent of COVID-19, I now understand why they wore masks in public. The conference was abuzz with researchers from across the globe, who shared ground-breaking findings from their individual labs.

In addition to these international conferences, local conferences have afforded me the opportunity to meet peers form various Universities in South Africa, with whom I have exchanged research findings and ideas. Conferences have also offered me an opportunity to display my presentation skills. As a consequence I was given the Young Scientist Award in Basic Pharmacology for the 2nd best podium presentation at the First Conference of Biomedical and Natural Sciences and Therapeutics in 2018, while my late colleague lab mate got the 1st prize.

Left: Myself, presenting a  poster in Kyoto Japan at a world Pharmacology conference. Right: colleagues and myself carrying awards at a National Science conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Unfortunately, the global wave of lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic has rendered conducting science conferences in person a challenging task. As a result, there has been an increase in online research conferences, as a way to sustain the level of academic exchange during these difficult times. Virtual meetings have many advantages, including a decrease in the financial burden and ease of access. A screen with multiple faces (figure below), and phrases like “please mute your mic” have been a familiar feature over the past year. Although the online environment allows for easy organization of meetings, I personally feel like the social connection that usually happens during person to person interactions is lost. For example, when I am presenting I love making eye contact with people in the audience as a way of evaluating their level of concentration. This falls away when your audience is behind muted mics and cameras and all one has to stare at is a computer screen.

The 2021 South Young African Academy of Science blogging team, meeting for the first time, in a virtual meeting earlier this year.

Person to person interaction during conferences fosters the establishment of relations and collaboration amongst researchers, and this is not particularly easy to do in a virtual setting. With vaccination strategies being rolled out in various countries being rolled out, I am hopeful that COVID-19 and lockdowns will soon be a thing of the past and we can safely resume physical conferences.