Last Tuesday we were delighted to welcome over 50 clinicians studying for a PhD from 12 UK institutions for the annual Clinical Research Fellows Meeting, a chance to share research interests, hear clinician scientists speak about their career progression, and to participate in talks and poster presentations about interesting science.

We started with three excellent talks from current clinical research fellows. We heard from Francesca Jackson-Spence who told us about her plan to use wearable devices as a surrogate for quality of life in clinical trials, Matteo Zanovello on his project looking at the role of TDP-43 loss of function in motor neuron disease and Jemma Longley who spoke about her project looking at microRNA manipulation of macrophage polarisation in the lymphoma microenvironment. 
 
Professor Robert Heyderman then gave us an incredibly interesting overview of his career and some advice on navigating a career in global health. Having directed the highly successful Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme (MLW) for over 8 years, he transformed the Programme into a centre of excellence led by Malawian & international scientists and spoke about improving the health of people in sub-Saharan Africa.  This was followed by two great talks from Professor Philippa Matthews and Dr Aran Singanayagam on their experiences as clinical scientist group leaders. Professor Matthews went into depth about her work and passion for researching HBV and Dr Singanayagam presented his research on how innate immunity to viral and bacterial pathogens is dysregulated in the context of inflammatory airway diseases. 

Later on, clinical research fellows gave talks about their projects. Iannish Sadien spoke about the role of clonal interactions in the formation of intestinal tumours, followed by Emily Glover who presented a talk about targeting miR-21 to inhibit the inflammatory response following ischaemic kidney injury and Claudia Lee who spoke about microenvironment-mediated immune evasion in primary non-small cell lung cancer. 
 
To end the day, we had talks from three clinician scientists: Dr Edward Carr, Dr Tabitha Turner-Stokes and Dr Anna Wilkins, who shared their experiences balancing clinical practice with a career as an academic. There was a useful Q&A session that followed where the panel were able to offer advice and share some of the difficulties they had faced. The message was to be clear on what you want to get out of your career and not to be deterred by people telling you that you can’t do it that way. There are many routes to a successful academic career, it is possible to manage this flexibly around your personal life if you advocate strongly for it and importantly, there is no one well-trodden route – everyone finds their own way through the career path and what works for one person will not necessarily work for another.
 
Finally, Peter Ratcliffe gave an amusing account of his early career with inspiring messages of having confidence to pursue your own questions even when others do not perceive the value, in essence to dispense with personal anxiety to do something original.

The quality of the science and delivery of the talks was commented on by many attendees and it was a brilliant opportunity to meet other Clinical Fellows and to renew inspiration in clinical academia. We look forward to holding our next event in 2024!

- Clinical Research Fellows Meeting Organising Committee