Travel story: Adeel Khoja

Adeel Khoja from the Robinson Research Institute travelled to Chicago, Illinois to present at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November.

This is what Adeel had to say about their experience:

As a final year PhD student at the Adelaide Medical School, the University of Adelaide it was an amazing experience to attend and present at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2022 held from November 04 to 07, 2022 at the McCormick Place Convention Centre in Chicago, Illinois, USA and that too after almost 3 years. My moderated digital poster presentation entitled “Pregnancy Complications Are Associated With Premature Coronary Artery Disease - Linking Three South Australian Cohorts” was held on Monday, November 07, 2022 in the Multi-Generational Cardiovascular Risk: Pregnancy and Childhood session. It was an honour to present at the flagship cardiology conference and to receive meaningful feedback and suggestions from some of the great experts in the field.  This unique data linkage project merging three South Australian registries forms a major component of my PhD thesis and it was the first time I presented at an international conference as part of my PhD candidature.

In addition, I also got a chance to meet with Prof Salim Virani who works in the area of cardiovascular research at the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Houston, Texas. We had a good discussion regarding premature coronary heart disease registry at BCM, Houston exploring ways to compare it with the South Australian registry and later with the South-East Asian registries (including Pakistan and India). We also had some discussion on post-doctoral opportunities in US particularly at BCM, Houston which he was aware of and highlighted potential opportunities. I also attended some nice poster sessions on epidemiology and public health and rapid-fire presentations on mHealth and community based interventions on achieving lifestyle goals and evidence-based clinical sessions. Overall, it was an incredible learning experience to be part of such a prestigious cardiology conference.