i won first place at my first conference

Holy excitement. This was my first conference... ever. I attended the Spring Clinical meeting of the American Association of Phycists in Medicine (AAPM) in St. Louis, Missouri.I was the only student to attend from UF, and none of my research advisors were able to attend this one. Going alone without knowing anybody there forced me to mingle and meet new physicists. It was amazing. I sat at a table full of women with powerful experiences and backgrounds. I made a great friend from University Hospitals in Cleveland and had dinner with her a few nights.

To top it all off, on the last day of this conference, I found out that I won both of the first place prizes in the Young Investigators Symposium and Best Poster Presentation:

• Lipnharski I, Carranza C, Mench A, Lamoureux R, Cormack B, Bidari S, Rill L, Arreola M. (2015, March). Quantifying Organ Dose and Improving Image Quality in CT Exams of Subjects with Metal Implants Utilizing a Metal-Artifact Reduction Algorithm. Oral Presentation at the Spring Clinical Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, St. Louis, MO. 1st Place Award.

 

• Lipnharski I, Mench A, Carranza C, Lamoureux R, Gyapong S, Rill L, Mohammed T, Arreola M. (2015, March). Correlating Image Quality and Reduced Radiation Exposure From Low-Dose CT Scanning in a Lung Cancer Screening Program. Poster Presentation at the Spring Clinical Meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, St. Louis, MO. 1st Place Award.

​The rush of emotions I felt were surreal. I was so proud of the work my team conducted. I was so happy to tell my advisors and parents and make them proud. Little did I know this would be the first conference of many where I would learn great things and meet brilliant people.