Jackson Burton Conference Summary

Jackson Burton

Ph.D. Candidate
Applied Mathematics GIDP

Conference Summary
2015 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
April 18-22, 2015

I attended the 2015 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Philadelphia.  This was my first attendance at this conference.  The structure and layout of this conference is on a massive scale as several thousand researchers, physicians, and scientists attend.  Several topics based on the most up to date research are focused on through seminars, poster sessions, and discussion panels.  My purpose at the conference was to present two posters during the posters sessions.  Each of these times of presenting was a great opportunity to network with others from a variety of disciplines.  This was highly advantageous as many of them contributed widely different perspectives on my work.  This is especially true since my work falls into the mathematical applications to cancer research while the vast majority of individuals were experts in the biological and medical fields. In addition, I was able to ask a number of curiosity driven questions for which many had solid current answers.  Being able to interact with so many experts doing current research in a variety of disciplines provided the best input and understanding I could have gotten.  Individual research can sometimes suffer without the current knowledge of others outside of your field.  In this sense, the conference was invaluable.  I myself was also able to have conversations with others presenting their own posters.  Because of the breadth and depth of the conference, there was no shortage of content on the research topics I focus on.  The overall experience also gave me a good idea of what primary topics are being covered in the cancer research realm allowing me gain a big picture understanding. 

The other primary benefit of attending the conference was that I was able to interact with my colleague and manager whom I work for remotely.  He has considerable experience in the cancer research field and being able to have face to face interaction on project topics was extremely helpful.     He was able to introduce me to some of his fellow researchers during the conference providing great network opportunities.  These encounters are helpful in gauging what kind of research topics industry professionals are looking for in new hires. 

Overall, it was a great experience to attend the annual meeting.  It provided a multitude of different networking opportunities, deepened my content knowledge through interdisciplinary interaction, and increased my overall enthusiasm for my research.