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Day 3 of the 9th International Conference on Applied Hair Science featured poster presentations. However, unlike ‘live’ conferences, where posters are displayed on poster boards and where you can talk face-to-face with the presenters, in this conference, the presentations and discussions were all performed online.
In our new kind of poster session, presenters had 6 minutes to present their posters on-line, with no Q&A allowed after each poster. After that, Zoom-rooms were organized where the presenters were available to talk to the participants and answer questions. We organized 4 poster Zoom-rooms, based around different research themes. Attendees could jump from room to room as they pleased. Each of the Zoom-rooms enabled some very rich discussions about the topics they were focused on.
17 posters were presented at the conference. Too many to review in this blog. However, we would like to highlight the poster presentations made by staff from TRI.
Firstly, Dr Ernesta Malinauskyte presented a poster titled “What's the best pH for your shampoo? It depends on what you are looking to achieve.” This work investigated the very interesting effects of different pH shampoos on the hair properties. Results showed that, after 20 washes with different pH shampoos, you can see differences in how hair responds to UV radiation and heat, as well as changes in keratin cross link density and lipid content. Overall, pH 3 shampoo was the most beneficial to the hair.
Dr Larry Senak presented the “Evaluation, Comparison, and Visualization of Actives Diffusion by Capillary Action in Hair Fibers with FTIR imaging Spectroscopy”. Many studies in the past have investigated side-ways diffusion of actives into the hair fiber. However, in this very original piece of work, Larry and the team from TRI used spectroscopy to measure active diffusion along the hair fiber. Their work was able to follow the diffusion of resorcinol along the length of hair fibers over time, opening new opportunities for investigating active diffusion inside the hair.
Dr Rezma Shrestha presented the “Versatile applications of FTIR spectroscopy in clinical evaluations: From hair to scalp.” In this work she demonstrated how spectroscopy is used to evaluate things like scalp sebum levels and oxidative damage to the hair fibers. Rezma also showed how spectroscopy, being precise and non-invasive, is well suited to use in clinical trials.
Finally, Chantal Adlam, talked about “The effectiveness of LOC/LCO method on moisture locking in textured hair and its impact on breakage and other hair properties”. In this work she used the Liquid /Oil/Cream (LOC) and Liquid/Cream/Oil (LCO) methods to evaluate the moisture-locking effect in the hair fiber and used techniques as repeated grooming, tensile testing, and SEM to evaluate the fiber effects. Chantal observed that LOC and LCO have the potential to reduce premature breakage.
Nothing replaces face-to-face poster sessions and talking openly with your peers about your work over a glass of wine. This virtual poster session did, however, open-up the conference to many more scientists from all around the world, was 100% COVID-safe and was very well attended. We would like to think that this event made us all feel a little closer in these awful pandemic times.
If you want to see all posters, the presentations will be available at TRI Library after October!
For more content about hair science, you can go to https://library.triprinceton.org