My First Scientific Conference

This past Thursday and Friday, I visited Houston for the first time!  Although I did not have a chance to do much site-seeing, I had a wonderful time :-)  My PI (the primary investigator of the lab I'm working in... aka my boss), a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, and I attended the 19th annual Texas Forum for Reproductive Sciences at Texas Children's Pavilion for Women at the huge medical center complex in Houston.  In the week leading up to the conference, I made my first every poster, which displayed a bit of background on my project, a few current hypotheses in the lab, and the first bit of my own data from work in the lab.

We drove down to Houston in some pretty heavy rain on Thursday morning and arrived around noon, just in time to grab some lunch (italian sub and diet coke... brought me back to my Blimpie days!) and check in.  We listened to a great keynote lecture by Dr. Doug Stocco from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center about his lab's discovery and characterization of StAR protein, which is necessary for the transfer of cholesterol in the mitochondria in cells and subsequent steroid production.  Next, 6 platform presenters spoke about their work for about 15 minutes each and we had the chance to speak with grad students and post docs one-on-one during the the poster session.

Mala and I outside The Armadillo Palace! thanks to Alina for sharing this picture with me :-)

At 7pm, we headed to The Armadillo Palace.  We ate wonderful BBQ and pecan pie and did a bit of mingling with others at the conference. It was a very nice, Texan evening.  

Friday morning's festivities kept us busy... breakfast, poster session, platform presentations.  The best part about Friday was that the Mahendroo lab finally had the opportunity to present our work! 

I participated in the poster session, speaking with conference attendees about my research and preliminary findings on elastin in the mouse cervix throughout pregnancy and in our preterm birth model  {[ Cervical elastin structure changes throughout pregnancy but not between term and preterm ripening]}.  A picture of me in front of my poster is coming soon.

The postdoc from our lab presented his work regarding hyaluronin (HA) synthetases and the role of HA in the cervix. 

All things considered, it was a GREAT first conference and first opportunity to present my work.  The people who attend TFRS are wonderfully friendly and interested in trainee progress in the reproductive sciences.  I am looking forward to attending for 3+ more years  :-)

Oh, and next year, for only the second time in the conference's history, TFRS will not be held in Houston.  Instead, we will head to San Antonio, TX, in April 2014!  

http://www.utmb.edu/tfrs/

Welcome, Spring!

and carbonara for dinner :-)

Quiche-y

We are going through a quiche-obsession phase here at our apartment.  Between Kathryn and I, we've made four quiches in the past week.

The current quiche from the bottom up:

 basic deep-dish pie crust
 baby spinach
 1/8c grated parmesan cheese
 5 slices of bacon
 1/8c grated parmesan cheese
 4 eggs + 1/2c(ish) half and half blended together briefly

375 degree oven for ~35 minutes

MoDTS

MoDTS: Mechanisms of Disease and Translational Science Track

or as it is affectionately known: MoD  (although it's tempting to pronounce it like "mod," we like to pronounce each letter individually)

It is a "med into grad" initiative sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (the same funders of the wonderful 7 week Summer Scholars in Biology and Biomedical Research experience before my first year at WashU).  

The goal of the track is to introduce us graduate students to the clinical research environment... the place where biomedical scientists hope their bench research can help patients.  We are working to bridge the gap between lab work and clinical trials, translating basic science discoveries into bettering patient outcomes.  That is a goal that is fairly big-picture in nature.  

So this summer we will be very busy students-- learning the basics and laying the ground work for futures in translational research. 

The organizers will pair us with a 'clinical immersion mentor.'  That mentor will be a physician at UTSouthwestern who is currently working on a clinical trial of some sort. We will spend 4 weeks shadowing, attending research group meetings, learning about the institution's review process for acceptance of clinical trials, and helping out where we can.  

We will also take classes including pathology, physiology, and biomedical statistics.  



http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/education/graduate-school/programs/phd-degrees/specialized--supplemental-phd/mechanisms-of-disease/index.html