Vancouver, Canada
PROGRAM: Applied Mathematics

I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Annual Meeting in beautiful Vancouver, BC. Besides being my first serious conference, it was a new experience to be in the minority as one of a handful of mathematicians in a sea of eye researchers. I presented a poster on joint work done with my advisor and our collaborators from the Indiana University School of Optometry in which I detailed our efforts to fit our mathematical model to experimental data extracted from images of subjects’ eyes. The chance to share our methods and get feedback from the eye community was invaluable.

As conference attendees spanned those in and out of the university setting, I was tasked with explaining my poster to other academics as well as convincing clinicians and industry professionals that the results of my model could have an impact on the medical community. This helped fine-tune my public speaking skills as I had to differentiate my research pitch based on my audience. I gained inspiration for new directions to take my work from talking with health scientists about problems they face that could benefit from a mathematical perspective.

The locale of Vancouver allowed for free time away from the conference to be well spent. I took a morning to hike Grouse Mountain with my research collaborator and academic big sister, during which we brainstormed improvements to our collective work. Dinners became networking events, as I enjoyed the city’s diverse cuisine while getting acquainted with colleagues of my advisor and collaborators. These professional relationships forged at the conference will be vital in the future as I foresee my research path as both interdisciplinary and requiring a high level of cross-department collaboration. In short, ARVO was an unforgettable and highly constructive experience.