Jun 02, 2021

Huck Grad Students Hold Virtual Life Sciences Symposium

Huck Graduate Students organized a virtual Life Sciences Symposium, welcoming keynote speakers from Penn State and internationally, and giving awards for outstanding student presentations.

The Huck Graduate Student Advisory Committee (HGSAC) oversaw the fifth annual Life Sciences Symposium last month, welcoming students, speakers, and interested researchers to a two-day event held on May 18-19.

Due to ongoing precautions over COVID-19, the event was held virtually, with organizers pivoting to engage attendees virtually in the online service Gather.town. The "My Research" video contest required entrants to submit YouTube videos, with winners decided by both expert opinion and public acclaim. More than 40 people logged on to take in 12 oral presentations, 36 poster presentations, and 6 organization booths.

Also available online were the event's two keynote speakers. Una Fitzgerald, Professor and Director of the Galway Neuroscience Centre at the National University of Ireland Galway, spoke about reducing research waste and minimizing the environmental impact of laboratory practices. Penn State's own Adele Turzillo, professor and head of the Animal Science Department, gave a talk titled "The Role of Science in Decision Making: How interpretation and communication of scientific results impact our personal choices and public policy."

"The keynote talks brought new information and good discussion to how we are conducting our science and impacting the environment as well as how there is hidden bias in scientific results that we need to pay more attention to," said Isabel da Silva, Graduate Adviser to the Huck Institutes and chair of HGSAC.

The organizers admitted that making the event online-only was a challenge. "To hold a virtual event, over Zoom, is not as appealing as a real symposium," said da Silva. "Choosing the right time when more people can attend seems to be a big challenge in addition to creating events that really make people want to join on another Zoom call. But, from those who attended, it was a great experience to learn something new or share their work and receive feedback."

Several awards were given for outstanding presentations. A full list of the winners is below:

Oral Presentation

First Place
Riëtte van Biljon, "Dissecting the regulatory role of an enriched DNA sequence motif found upstream of Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte-associated genes "

Second Place
Julia Kelliher, "The role of oxylipins in neuroinflammation"
Maria Isabel Da Silva, "Evidence for Immune tolerance in peripheral blood leukocytes of dairy cattle during early pregnancy"
Chiara Vanalli, "Interactions between climate change and coinfections: what should we expect from the future?"
As the second place is a tie, no award was given for third place.

My Research video contest

People's Choice
Daniel Belcher

Expert's Choice
Rebecca Fleeman

Posters

Computational Biology & Statistics

First Place
Susan Tian, "Towards Synthetic Microbiota Transplants: Insights for C. difficile Treatment From Meta-analysis"

Second Place
Emily Bean Van Syoc, "Effect of metformin treatment on the gut mycobiome of type 2 diabetes patients: A meta-analysis"

Human Health, Nutrition, & Physiology

First Place
Janhavi Damani, "A randomized controlled trial of dietary supplementation with dried plums on inflammatory markers in postmenopausal women"

Second Place
Rebecca Fleeman, "Alzheimer’s disease risk factor APOE4 alters cytokine secretion patterns in the frontal cortex of mice"

Microbiology, Pharmacology, & Immunology

First Place
Divya Prakash, "Structure and function of an unusual flavodoxin from the domain Archae"

Second Place
Juhi Arora, "Characterizing new vitamin D targets in the immune system using novel vitamin D receptor (VDR) reporter mouse"

Molecular Biology, Genetics, & Chemistry

First Place
Santosh Panthi, "Paramyxovirus-like Particles: a novel strategy for proteins deliver"

Second Place
Shikha Chauhan, "Elucidating the roles of 2', 3'-cyclic nucleotide monophosphates in bacterial signaling and stress response"

Plant & Agricultural Sciences, Zoology, & Ecology

First Place
Ele Saltmarsh, "Exploring the potential of in silico tools to enhance agricultural resilience to climate change"

Second Place
Christian Cantos, "Generation of novel alleles of rice extra-large G proteins (XLGs) via CRISPR/Cpf1 gene editing system"