It all began with a team of seven students and three specialists in the field of dental material, endodontics and microbiology researching on the possibility of a new QAS-based material/ K21 to be used as an alternative intracanal medicament in the future. The research was conducted over a span of 12 months in 2019. In 2020, there came a chance for me, Lim Xian Jin, to represent our team and showcase our work to the public at International Association for Dental Research-Malaysian Section (IADR-MalSec) on 10 October 2020 after the event was postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic.
| Presenting My Research at IADR-MalSec Poster Competition |
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| My research title was ‘Quaternary Ammonium Silane/k21 Triggers Intracanal Biofilm Destruction – A New Paradigm’. After approval from our School Dean and IADR-MalSec Committee, poster refinement and practice for presentation were done in order to be well prepared for the competition. Prior to the conference, I was blessed to have IMU Student Services Department to sponsor my friends and I for the registration fee!
With this conference as my first virgin poster presentation representing IMU at GoogleMeet, I was equally excited yet anxious about what would be in store for me. Thanks to the coaching by Dr Umer Daood, the five minutes of presentation was plain-sailing followed by some burning questions by the judges. At around 5pm, the results were announced virtually. I was elated when PP051, my poster was awarded 3rd place for Junior Category Poster Competition. I was grateful and felt blessed that the hard work for the past one year finally paid off!! Good things came in pairs when my best friend, Sandra Churme, from IMU too, won the 2nd place in the same category, allowing us to bring the IMU name to the centre stage yet again!! |
I felt that the IMU dentistry programme has helped us in a lot of ways to prepare us for this moment of glory. We were filled with abundance of opportunities to present in front of any crowd be it our peers, lecturers or even to the public. We would always receive full support from the faculty regardless of any problem we faced.
I felt that over these past 5 years of dentistry, I am equipped with not only dental knowledge and clinical evidence, but also the soft skills to present my work to others in a meticulous manner. However, despite the many ‘gifts’ from the School of Dentistry, students too, have to be hardworking and humble enough to learn from every mistake in order to succeed. To get 2nd and 3rd places out of 41 participants were not an easy feat, but with sheer exuberance and determination and a little bit of faith, magic could definitely happen!!
