UPENN CVI UNDERGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM (ORAL PRESENTATION - 6 POINTS)

 

Lub Dub. My heart beats fast. Palms sweating. Eyes moving back and forth in the room. Standing in front of over 75 people from the UPENN Cardiovascular Institute, including faculty, graduate students, and fellow undergrads, this summer I had my first scientific oral presentation on my project- Placenta-Heart Cross-Talk in Pregnancy.  This research project is significant, as cardiovascular complications account for over 33% of pregnancy-related deaths.  My focus was on understanding cardiac remodeling during healthy pregnancy.  I hypothesized that Placental Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein (IGFBP) proteases, specifically ADAM-12 and PAPP-A-2, secreted into maternal blood during pregnancy, mediate placenta-heart communication. At the end of the summer, I got the opportunity to present my research at the UPENN Cardiovascular Institute Undergraduate Symposium and the AHA-SURE Virtual Symposium.

This oral presentation experience was empowering, allowing me to share what I have been working on over the past ten weeks. I could engage the audience, showing them the methods and experimental procedures I had to learn during the summer, including Western Blots, Immunohistochemistry, ELISA, animal work, and many others. I also engaged them in my results, sharing with them my excitement about what the pilot data looked like and some of the future steps that this work will undergo. 

I fondly remember my Explorations of Neuroscience class with Dr. Mark Lee and Dr. Benveniste during my first year. Dr. Lee underscored the importance of asking and being asked questions as an expression of curiosity that makes a researcher. As a growing scientist, I learned to ask questions from this class. However, as a researcher, I now agree with Dr. Lee about the presence of a question. A hand shooting up in shared enthusiasm at the end of a presentation makes a researcher’s day because they feel heard, understood, and excited to talk more about the project in which they had put so much work. This makes my highlight from this oral presentation the moment the director of the UPENN CVI, Dr. Daniel P. Kelly, raised his hands to ask me the first question at the end of my presentation. 

Now, I look forward to more scientific oral presentations in my career, with sweaty palms or not. Heart beating fast or not. Lub Dub.  

- Eniola Omogbai