APS2025: Annual Scientific Meeting Travel Grant Recipient Report

Rebecca Robertson

Rebecca is a Postdoctoral Research Associate the Brain and Mind Centre (BMC) at the University of Sydney. She completed her PhD in 2025 looking at underlying acute pain mechanisms in subcortical limbic regions at ultra-high field in healthy individuals. She is now completing a post-doc concentrating on more clinical pain populations such as individuals experience chronic pain following a spinal cord injury (SCI).

2025 Australian Pain Society 45^th Annual Scientific Meeting

Attending the Australian Pain Society (APS) Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) is always an extremely exciting part of my year. However, with increasing demands as a post-doc it can be difficult to fund the travel. Thanks to the APS travel grant I was able to attend APS2025 without the pressure of knowing how I would fund the travel to Melbourne.

I was fortunate to present a poster at APS2025 which looked at the final paper of my PhD. This paper was providing insights into the resting state connectivity of the hypothalamus to key limbic regions also known to be important to pain processing. I received insightful questions from other researchers regarding the potential application of this technique in chronic pain conditions.

This was not the first APS ASM I attended – I have been fortunate to attend four others previously. This one stood out due to its amazing international plenaries and the sheer amount of different academic and clinical experts in attendance.

I had the pleasure of meeting A/Prof Natalia Egorova-Brumley properly this year. We had spoken over email and at previous conferences, but I was able to gain more insight of her research through her topical session discussing the importance of considering the mechanisms of nocebo using imaging in pain states. A/Prof Natalia Egorova-Brumley was a wonderful connection, and I hope to collaborate with her and her lab on an upcoming paper looking at novel therapies for chronic pain and the impact on sleep.

As usual the Meet the Minds session is of great value as it lets early career researchers (ECRs) and students directly discuss and gain insights into to the passion and dedication of academics.

I am looking forward to taking in this meeting with new eyes as I will be deeper into my ECR period. Every year I come away from the APS ASM with enthusiasm to perform the best research I can, and I hope to be able to bring this energy into next year’s conference.

Declaration:
Rebecca Robertson has nothing to declare.