6th DCVA Translational Cardiovascular Research Meeting

The poster session of the 6th Dutch CardioVascular Alliance Translational Cardiovascular Research Meeting received 54 poster submissions from research groups associated with cardiology all over the Netherlands. Out of these 54 poster submissions, 10 were picked for a moderated poster session where each candidate received 1.5 minutes to pitch their poster to the judges.

I was one of those 10 selected submissions and was the last one to present my poster (see Fig. 1). The research towards trapped reentry took some extra steps since my last presentation of the subject, and my poster reflected those changes. However, due to the short timeframe to pitch my idea, I could not go into the details of my research. I therefore presented the mechanism of trapped reentry by comparing it to a volcano. We know that volcanoes can be sleeping. While they are sleeping, the ground only locally trembles. However, when a volcanic eruption occurs, the ground shakes for miles away. Me and my colleagues now found that a similar mechanism can take place in the heart, where local excitation waves can escape from a small isolated region, "the eruption", to affect the heart globally.

My pitch captivated the judges which resulted in a poster prize award a the end of the day (Fig. 2, although the award should mention 200 EUR). Together with a nice bouquet of flowers, an Utrecht themed "borrelplank" and my poster prize, this was an excellent end of another great meeting full of international cardiac researchers.