Oct. 16-19th, 2022 | Boston, MA

In spring of 2022, I submitted an abstract describing my aerosolizer characterization intranasal delivery research to the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). My abstract was accepted for poster presentation at their annual PharmSci360 conference in Boston, MA. Additionally, it was recognized in the top 10% of abstracts and received a "2022 AAPS Best Abstract" award!

After the opening plenary on the first day of the conference, I spent my second and third days at the conference speaking with fellow poster presenters and attending keynote speaker sessions. I learned about the development of long-acting contraceptive technologies and new vaccine technologies such as microneedles and buccal patches; heard from a Pfizer executive about challenges and triumphs in the development of the COVID-19 vaccine; and attended a special series highlighting the microbiome and its impact on the therapeutic efficacy of drugs. I also attended a career session on designing a career board of directors and had my resume reviewed at the career services booth.

In addition to these sessions, I tried to seek out presentations related to my research. I listened to a intranasal delivery broadcast over lunch and spoke with poster presenters working on intranasal delivery of a polymer nasal film and nanoparticle treatments to reduce radiation resistance in glioblastoma. I also attended a student-specific mentoring breakfast and learned about the career paths of a mathematical modeler at Simulation Plus, a retired scientist at Insmed, and an HR representative at Merck. Now that I am home, I want to follow up with those professionals on LinkedIn and be on the lookout for an upcoming paper from the glioblastoma group in the Biomaterials journal.

On the third day of the conference, I had to opportunity to present my work in a digital poster-style forum to interested attendees. During this time, I met students and a professor from Duquesne University who are researching lung delivery of solidifying nanoparticles. It was very rewarding to engage with researchers in a related area and share ideas and experiences. Their team recommended several literature sources to me about intranasal delivery, which I plan to read and possibly incorporate into the background of my honors thesis.

If I were to go back and do it again, I would only attend in-person presenters, rather than some "silent stage" presentations. In the latter format, presenters showed their slides and audio was streamed into your personal headphones. However, because these presentations were held in the main arena as opposed to designated conference rooms, it was difficult to hear and very distracting. I did not get as much out of these presentations for those reasons. I would also have strategized going into the mentor breakfast about the type of professionals I wished to speak with. Even despite these areas for improvement, I greatly enjoyed my AAPS conference experience and I'm very glad to have attended. While growing as a professional and pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, I learned so much about novel biotechnologies which refreshed my excitement for science and the research to which I contribute.