Shu-Yung Lin

It was a great honour to be chosen and invited to the APSR-ISRD joint session during ATS 2018 in San Diego representing Taiwan and the National Taiwan University Hospital. We participate in international meetings not only to receive breaking news on medical research first hand and learn from other outstanding researchers, but also to collaborate and get to meet with others to form connections. After all, it is people that matter. During the presentation session, I was able to meet other excellent doctors and scholars working on respiratory medicine and had some very good times exchanging experiences. It was a unique and pleasant experience during the whole ATS meeting.

I had the opportunity to present my research in 3 minutes with 3 slides. My topic: "Genome-wide RNA-seq Analyses of O-glycan Glycosyltransferases for Molecular Prognostic Markers in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer" was about the complex glycosyltransferases involved in lung cancer and its prognosis by using next generation sequencing technique. I used to present the work in a session of 30 minutes to make the audience understand what it is about and its impact. To condense the information in 3 minutes really made me thoroughly think about what were the essence and most important aspects of the study. This led to some re-designed graphs, illustrations, and slides. The speech draft had been repeatedly modified and practiced to make sure that people unfamiliar to glycobiology and next generation sequencing could grasp the idea of my study.

I had a great time viewing the posters during the earlier facilitated poster viewing session. I was hoping that I could also view the posters and discuss with the authors from those who gave oral presentations. After all, not everyone is used to "3-min thesis", and most of us were not native English speakers. The form of "RAPID" poster discussion that was first introduced in ATS this year seemed to be a great mix of poster viewing and presentation for future reference.

I enjoyed and learned a lot from the speeches made by Dr Nakanishi, Dr Yu and Dr Bai. The short talk by Dr Moss, ATS president, was very inspiring. Last but not least, the kind and professional hosting of Dr Fong made the session very enjoyable. The session made my ATS experience this year very different in a very good way. I look forward to future chances of meeting and sharing each other's work again in the near future!