A big congratulations to Azrul Yahya for winning a Young Investigator Travel Award at the 15^th International Congress of Radiation Research in Kyoto, Japan. Azrul has written an article on the experience.

I had the privilege of attending the 15^th International Congress of Radiation Research in Kyoto, Japan last May. The conference, held every four years in different countries, combines key fields in radiation sciences including: radiation biology, therapeutic radiation biology, life science, non-ionizing radiation, radiation protection science, radiation chemistry, radiation oncology, radiation medicine, and multidisciplinary fields.

There were more than 300 invited speakers, 130 oral presentations and 900 posters in addition to eye-opening sessions and congress lectures. With the recent Fukushima nuclear accident, the conference provided extensive related presentations. There was focus on some radiation oncology technologies not yet available in Australia but common in Japan like proton and carbon-ion treatments. Several well-known speakers including Wolfgang Dörr and Nobel Laureate, Shinya Yamanaka, gave their insightful speeches. I also delivered my oral presentation on the use of multi-label modelling in urinary toxicity prediction.

I view this conference as a broadening conference for me as some radiation science topics – including DNA damage and repair, radiation chemistry, particle therapy and radiation accidents – were covered in greater detail than what I was familiar with. I would definitely recommend the next conference which will be held in Manchester in 2019 for medical physics students to get a broader view on radiation sciences.

I was one of the recipients of the Young Investigator Travel Award from which I received JPY100,000. Here are my selfies in front of the conference venue, the opening ceremony where they cracked open the sake container and a bento lunch box with a cute little bunny.

A big thanks to Azrul for writing the article.