A three-minute 'elevator pitch' of her research has proved successful for Otago PhD candidate Gretel Major. She was one of a handful of students invited to make their pitch in front of an audience of health researchers and industry representatives at the recent HealthTech Week in Auckland. On the strength of this Gretel won the CMDT Early Career Researcher Award, making her a young researcher to watch.
She was quick to credit the many talking opportunities the university provides to students as part of her preparation, and encourages her fellow students to take full advantage of these.
The Consortium for Medical Device Technologies (CMDT) was established to help grow the medical device industry in Aotearoa New Zealand. Each year it invites applications from PhD students and Early and Mid-Career Researchers (with less than 10 years' experience post-PhD) to compete for its CMDT Early Career Researcher Award.
Gretel spoke at the Te Tītoki Mataora Research Day at HealthTech Week where she impressed the judging panel with her abstract and oral presentation, “Developing next generation adipose tissue grafts for soft tissue reconstruction”.
“I appreciated the opportunity to talk to people in the med tech device industry since this is where I see my research career heading. And of course, I'm honoured to have been shortlisted to talk – I thank CMDT for the award.”
Gretel works out of the Christchurch Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering (CReaTE) research group, a part of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Musculoskeletal Medicine, and is supervised by Professor Tim Woodfield and Associate Professor Khoon Lim.