Yesterday was by far the craziest day on my schedule and also the exact reason why I love coming to Experimental Biology. Here’s a quick rundown of my day:
- ASBMB Plenary session “Enemy within – immune and autoimmune responses to the cytosolic DNA and RNA”
- ASPET “Rescue of GPCR Mutants In Vivo”
- ASN “Low-Calorie Sweeteners and Health: What Does the Science Tell Us?”
- APS “Changes in Grasshopper Jumping Muscle During Intermolt Development” (A student from Union College where I teach- couldn’t miss it!)
- ASBMB poster session- 2 of my students were presenting!
- Met with a new potential collaborator
- Met with the founder of ConscienHealth and Chair of the Obesity Action Coalition, Ted Kyle
- ASBMB session “Changes in Medical Education”
My favorite part of EB is the fact that I can go to sessions in other societies to hear about topics that I am interested in. I find that biochemistry and molecular biology is a part of all of the disciplines that are here and so there are always presentations in the other societies that I end up checking out. The talk on grasshopper jumping featured lactate dehydrogenase assays. It’s a great example of applied biochemistry- understanding how changes in enzyme activity relate to changes in muscle physiology. Of course this also highlights the only downside about the meeting: so much science, so little time!
Another great part about EB is seeing my undergraduate students present their research. This is the culmination of months (or in some cases years) of research. Sharing your research with others is such an important part of the process and I think is a big step in their training as scientists. I eavesdropped on them as they talked to people at their posters and I was very impressed with how well they were able to describe their work and how poised they were doing it! Great job!
The ability to meet people to form collaborations and partnerships is another part of coming to a meeting that is so important. Especially for someone like me at a small liberal arts college, the chance to collaborate with someone at a larger research institution is an amazing opportunity. Emailing someone out of the blue is not easy for a lot of people, but at EB you can sit down and really talk with people, brainstorm, and come up with some great ideas.
Finally, I also get the chance to work on refining and improving my craft. Something that ASBMB does really well is have sessions to help us learn new strategies and approaches to teaching, curricular development, and the needs of our students. If you teach, you would definitely benefit from coming to EB 2016 (or some of the satellite meetings coming up; more on those in a future post).