The Thomas C Chalmers MD Award Committee 2019 wishes to extend its congratulations to this year’s winner for best Poster presentation, Rui Wang.
2019 Poster presentation winner - Rui Wang
Froeks Kamminga, Methods Liaison Officer in the Editorial and Methods Department, caught up with best Poster presentation winner Rui Wang to find out a little more about him and ask what winning the award meant to him.
Rui is a research fellow from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, School of Clinical Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He works as a methodologist in the Evidence-based Women’ Health Care Research Group. He started his career as a gynaecologist and subsequently undertook training in epidemiology and shifted his career into clinical research and research methodology. He was awarded a PhD on evidence synthesis in November 2019. His methodology interests are randomised controlled trials and evidence synthesis methods, while his main clinical research interest is women’s health.
Why did you enter the competition?
You may agree with me that research on methodology seems to be less acknowledged and more difficult to engage the audience than clinical research. I think this competition is an excellent opportunity for all early career researchers to share their research on methodology and engage with a wider community. By entering the competition, I’m also committed to do my best to prepare my presentation.
What does the award mean to you personally?
I regard Thomas Chalmers as an inspiring pioneer in evidence-based medicine and consider it a great honour to receive the award named after him, also on behalf of my co-authors. I am motivated to continue my research to improve research quality in evidence-based medicine. It was not just his work that got me the award, and I thank my co-authors, especially Lene Seidler from the University of Sydney, for their help for preparing the presentation.
What impact has the award had on your work?
This was the first time I attended the Cochrane Colloquium, but I felt very welcomed by the community. I am grateful for all the congratulatory messages from old and new friends on social media, by email or in person, and I have also received some great suggestions and feedback on my presentation from the Cochrane community, despite it being a virtual colloquium. I really appreciate the opportunity to network and establish future collaborations. I would like to thank the Cochrane team, especially the Cochrane Chile team, for their efforts to organise such an amazing virtual event.
What advice have you got for researchers considering entering for the award in 2020:
There was a famous quote “A conference poster should be readable in 3 minutes, from 3 metres away, after 3 beers.” I think the idea is that delivering a clear and concise message is important for poster presentations, as in most cases a reader would have to spend maybe less than 1 minute on a poster. Therefore, it would be worth highlighting the key message by visualising the data so that the audience can be easily engaged during the presentation. We should also embrace diversity in poster designs and therefore you may get inspired by the #betterposter design. All the best!
You can find Rui's Poster here:
"Reporting of Cochrane systematic review protocols with network meta-analyses – a scoping review"
For further information on other prizes which are awarded at the Colloquium, please visit https://colloquium2020.cochrane.org/prizes-and-awards