Nicole Jacobsen Conference Summary

Nicole Jacobsen

Ph.D. Candidate
Physiological Sciences GIDP

 Conference Summary
Experimental Biology Meeting
San Diego, California
April 2-6, 2016

Thanks to the support of the Herbert E. Carter Travel Award, I was able to attend the Experimental Biology (EB) meeting in San Diego, CA from April 2-6. EB is a scientific meeting held once a year organized as a multidisciplinary event attended by over 14,000 scientists and exhibitors. EB is unique in that it is sponsored by six different societies and multiple guest societies in the biological sciences (fields of study include physiology, anatomy, nutrition, biochemistry, and others). The meeting features hundreds of lectures, pre-meeting workshops, and poster sessions across 5 days allowing for many opportunities for young scientists like myself to present their research and meet many established scientists in academia and industry.

I presented my work as a poster in the “Angiogenesis/Microvascular Remodeling/Injury and Repair” session sponsored by the Microcirculatory Society. I was pleased to have had consistent traffic at my poster and able to discuss the implications of my research with scientists outside of my immediate field (gap junction research). I received positive feedback about the quality of the research and additional suggestions for interpretation of the data—both of which were beneficial as I begin to prepare the manuscript for publication.

One of the major benefits of attending EB is the ability to attend any session from any society at the meeting. Because of this, the program featured many cross society themes such as Cancer Biology, Inflammation/Immunity, and Metabolism and Metabolic Disease, all of which have direct relevance to my field. For me, some of the most interesting sessions included: “Signal integration and microcirculatory blood flow control”, “Novel insights in vascular disease in metabolic syndrome”, and “Shear stress induced mechanotransduction in endothelial cells.”

In addition to the symposia and poster sessions, there were a number of Career Development lectures that were geared toward preparing students to have a successful scientific career in either academia or industry. As I am graduating within the next year and currently looking for my next position, the sessions about networking, finding job opportunities, and interviewing were all very helpful.

However, some of the most valuable experiences from EB were in more relaxed environments such as banquets, poster discussion receptions, or breaks between lectures. I was able to meet and talk with collaborators and other researchers about potential post-doctoral fellowships in their labs.