News Archive

A conference initiated by UWA medical students to showcase undergraduate health research has proven so successful in its second year that it could become a national event.

The Students in Health and Medical Research Conference (SHMRC) is the first conference designed exclusively to raise the profile of research by students within the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. Co-conveners Sarah O’Neill, a fourth-year medical student, and Patrick Wong, a sixth-year medical student, said the conference also aimed to provide inspiration for other students.

“The Faculty tries to promote research but… people are doing international calibre research that no one knows about,” Ms O’Neill said.

“They have the chance to present it at international conferences in Australia and overseas but they rarely have the chance to present it to their colleagues and to members of the Faculty.”

The quality of competition at SHMRC was amazing, with nine students selected to speak from a field of 32 entrants, she said.

Fifth-year medical student Mike Kamara won best young investigator while Sally Banfield, also a fifth-year medical student, won best verbal presentation. They each took home $500.

About 100 people attended the conference held in October, which was an increase on the debut conference last year. “We’d like to make it bigger, perhaps get (even broader) involvement from the Faculty, and ultimately we want it to go Australia wide,” Ms O’Neill said.

“We have the Australian Students’ Medical Conference in July every year and we were hoping to have a day conference either side of that so that it includes students from all the unis around Australia.”

The conference was supported strongly by the WA Institute for Medical Research and the School of Medicine and Pharmacology.

- By Amanda Saunders