Hello everyone.

Well, Friday was an incredibly exciting day for the Asteroid team. Our wonderful research assistants (myself, Carla, Therese and Sheima) attended Great North Children’s Research Council Conference (or GNCRCC) at the Sage Gateshead. The day involved attending many interesting talks about involving the public and patients in research, as well as meeting other researchers and presenting our poster: ‘Participant Influence on the development of ASTEROID’. Here’s a little summary…

8.30am – We arrived, collected our GNCRCC packs and put up our poster for everyone to see. Then there was a little bit of time to quickly look around the Sage. What an incredible place! I feel very lucky to live in such a gorgeous part of the UK.

9am – The talks started. It was hard to pick our my favourite as everyone was so interesting; however a definite highlight has to be the YPAG (Young People’s Advisory Group) talk. One of their young members, Ria, gave a fantastic talk about some research that she had done in her school. As a qualified teacher, it makes me very happy to see young people being so confident and engaged in science. Well done Ria!

1pm – Lunch time! Well done to the Sage for organising such delicious food – and fantastic lunch time entertainment! Having heard a talk about the health benefits of singing, we were then treated to hearing the RVI choir sing some of their favourite songs.

1.30pm – Back to the afternoon talks. It was inspiring to hear about all the fantastic work that is helping improve the lives of people.

3.45pm – The winners of the poster prizes were announced… I could not have been more surprised to hear my own name being read out along with the title of our poster. We had won! Shocked and flustered, I squeezed past the rest of my row and hurried up on to the stage to collect our prize.

4pm – A final chance to look at the posters, chat to everyone else at the conference – and celebrate our win! A lovely end to a wonderful day.