Clinical Academics in Training Annual Conference

Are you an early career researcher in medicine or health looking for a chance to present your research, perhaps for the first time?

CATAC is a great opportunity for you to:

• Develop your presentation skills.
• Meet with your peers and senior academics to build networks.
• Raise your profile within the clinical academic and research community.

Read about the CATAC 2023 event and hear from the attendees.

This event is generously supported by Wellcome.

Abstract submissions for CATAC 2024 are now CLOSED. 

There will be three competitions held at CATAC 2024 for all early-career researchers in medicine and health (with clinical backgrounds in all disciplines and specialities) currently working in the UK or Republic of Ireland: 

• Post-Doctoral Plenary Competition
  This competition is for researchers with clinical qualifications who have passed their PhD viva (at the abstract submission closing date). If selected you will be asked to prepare a 10 minute oral presentation, to be followed by 5 minutes of questions from the audience. A panel of judges will score the presentations. The winner and runner-up of this competition will receive a monetary prize. 
• Pre-Doctoral Plenary Competition
  This competition is for researchers with clinical qualifications who have not yet passed a PhD viva (at the abstract submission closing date). If selected you will be asked to prepare a 5 minute oral presentation, to be followed by 5 minutes of questions from the audience. A panel of judges will score the presentations. The winner and runner-up of this competition will receive a monetary prize.  
• Poster Competitions
  This competition is for all researchers with clinical qualifications. If selected you will be asked to prepare a poster to present at the conference. This year, posters will be grouped randomly (not by broad research categories as in previous years). Competitors will prepare a two-minute presentation of their poster for the on-the-day competition. This year, posters will be judged by your peers, the CATAC attendees. Details on the voting system will be shared with competitors when outcomes are announced.  There will be one winner  and one runner-up of each group who will each receive a monetary prize.  

Please note that participation in the competitions is not compulsory. You can attend the conference without competing. Registration for non-competing delegates will open in January 2024.

This event is generously supported by Wellcome.

To be eligible for the CATAC 2024 event competitions, you must be an early-career researcher in medicine or health who also meets all of the following criteria:

• Based in the UK or Republic of Ireland
• Either studying for your PhD or have completed your PhD and are conducting research as an early-career post-doctoral researcher
• Conducting academic research that is related to your clinical background
• Hold a relevant undergraduate and/or master’s degree, for example: medicine, nursing, midwifery, dentistry, veterinary sciences or other health professional degree

This event is generously supported by Wellcome.

CATAC is the result of the evolution of our prestigious annual meeting for clinical academics following an independent evaluation.

CATAC 2023

Held at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge on 7 June 2023, CATAC 2023 was open to nurses, midwives and Allied Health Professionals to ensure that all clinical backgrounds would be represented.

Many elements of this event were live-streamed to allow for virtual attendees.

Read more about it.

CATAC 2022

This took place at the Bristol Harbour Hotel, Bristol on 19 May 2022. Before that, CATAC took several years off due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“My first experience attending CATAC in 2022 was fascinating. All the presentations were brilliant and inspiring. I was really honoured to have won the first prize of the poster competition."
- Dr Haotian Gu CATAC 2022 First-place winner: Poster Group D – Neurology; Neuroscience; Imaging; Technology

You can watch back some of the event sessions . This includes all plenary competition presentations and a wonderful keynote speech from Professor Charlotte Summers. The page also includes details of all the competition winners. 

This event is generously supported by Wellcome.