In October this year, I travelled to Austria, in Vienna, for the annual Congress of European Association of Neurological Surgeons (EANS). I had been invited to give an oral presentation on ‘Visualising White Matter Tracts Using Multispectral Mueller Matrix Imaging’. The city was exceptionally beautiful, and I had a brilliant time learning about neurosurgery from many interesting lectures and meeting lots of inspiring individuals.
The conference took place from Sunday 5th October until Thursday 9th October. I managed to make it just in time for the Welcome Dinner on the first day, despite delayed flights, and this was an excellent chance to meet some of the other attendees. I was proud to see some strong representation of the University of Aberdeen, as there were quite a few other attendees from the University; they all did a fantastic job with their presentations.
Over the next couple of days, I attended an array of enlightening talks. My favourite was probably a keynote speech by the legendary neurovascular and skull base neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler. Instead of talking solely about research, he talked about the importance of curating a neurosurgical team that can not only rely on each other in the operating theatre, but also in daily life. He described his personal experience of having a culture of spending down time as a team as well, doing activities and relaxing together to cultivate this support system. I learned a lot from his and others’ talks, and it has helped me to think of new ideas for avenues of research I might want to pursue in the future.
The Congress Dinner was another highlight of the trip. This was at the Orangery in the Schönbrunn Palace gardens. The venue was beautiful and the food delightful; I had a lot of fun meeting new people and got the chance to talk about my research ahead of my presentation.
My presentation was on the last day of the conference. Essentially, my project was looking at a novel way of identifying white matter within the brain, which is a type of tissue that acts as the circuitry of the brain, coordinating and controlling functioning. White matter tracts can become damaged during neurosurgery, so that’s why it would be helpful to better visualise them. The presentation went well and thanks to a very early start at 7:00am, I managed to squeeze in some sightseeing before I had to leave!
We saw some of Prater Park and went on the ferris wheel there, saw St Stephen’s Cathedral and then went to a classical music concert (Austria is the home of Mozart, although technically he was from Salzburg). I managed to fit in a trip back to the Schönbrunn Palace and some souvenir shopping before my flight on Friday afternoon. All in all, this experience was fantastic and I’m so grateful for the opportunity!
