Alicia Mitchell

I am very honoured to have been chosen to receive an APSR Travel Award to attend the 2018 ATS International Conference in San Diego (18-23 May). This was a wonderful conference with a large range of medical and scientific sessions, with many new and exciting ideas being presented.

My research was selected for presentation in an oral session titled 'Lung transplant: Clinical research'. The title of my presentation was 'Transient populations of the human pulmonary virome are not associated with acute rejection after lung transplantation'. This work, which I completed during my PhD, was novel in the field of lung transplantation as one of the first longitudinal, prospective studies in the area sampling all patients at set time points post-transplant and reporting all viruses detected, not just in symptomatic patients. The literature in this area regarding the influence of respiratory viral presence within transplanted lungs, on early transplant outcomes including acute cellular rejection (ACR), remains unclear. A range of early studies have indicated a relationship between viral infection and ACR; however more recent studies have questioned this association. The work I presented was the first prospective study in the area and agreed with the literature that suggests no association between respiratory viral presence and ACR. This is also the first study to describe the role of community acquired respiratory viruses as transient members of the human respiratory virome post-transplantation; and to show that influenza A virus is a frequently detected asymptomatic virus in this cohort of patients. Furthermore, time-dependent analysis using cox proportional hazards models demonstrated no significant relationship between viral detection at any time and either concurrent or subsequent development of ACR (p = 0.979). My research was very well received by the scientists and transplant physicians that attended this session, with many questions being asked and extra attendees approaching me after the session has concluded to ask further questions and to discuss future opportunities. Presenting in this session gave me the chance to speak with some very experienced people in the field to gain advice regarding the next steps of my research.

At this conference, I also had the opportunity to attend many very interesting sessions including the Clinical Year in Review sessions and many thematic and discussion poster sessions. There was a range of very interesting research being presented, and I learnt more about Lung Transplantation which is an area of interest of mine.

In addition to the conference sessions, this year's ATS meeting allowed many opportunities for me to attend social events in the evening with many leaders in Respiratory medicine and to meet other researchers and students. Everybody I met was very interested in hearing more about my research and was very supportive and encouraging about going forward in this field. I feel very lucky to be a part of such a friendly and inspiring society and community.

A would like to sincerely thank the ASPR committee for honouring me with this APSR travel award, and for giving me the opportunity to attend the ATS 2018 International Conference. It was an amazing experience!