BD student Awardee values networking opportunities offered by the ASM Conference

Abstract

In 2015, I was the Tasmanian recipient of the annual Becton Dickinson (BD) Award, given to one student member of each state branch of the Australian Society of Microbiology. As a recipient of this award, Iwas given theopportunity togive anoral presentation at the 2015 ASM National Scientific Meeting in Canberra where I discussed some of the research I had been undertaking at the University of Tasmania relating to the characterisation of macrolide antibiotic resistance in nontypable Haemophilus influenzae. Dr Stefan Schwarz, of the Institute of Farm Animal Genetics of the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) in Germany, was also in attendance at the conference as an invited speaker. I first met Stefan at the ASM Student Breakfast where we discussed some of the research I had been doing and how it related to his own. He was also part of the audience during my presentation and we maintained contact with each other after the conference had concluded.