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Contents
A Note from the Collaborative Director
Undergraduate Research: Adjusting to Life at a Liberal Arts College
2012-2013 McNair Scholars
Fall-Summer Collaborative Grants
Convention Spotlight
NCUR
AACR
- Kaela Gedda
- Jens Paasen
- Gretchen Panzer
- Hannah Schmitt
- Luanne Spence
- Sarah Titus
Collaborative Research Stories
Important Dates
May 4, 2012 Student Academic Travel Grant and Attendee Grant applications due
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American Association for Cancer Research Reflection
Emily Goetz
Biology Major, Spanish Minor
I really enjoyed my experience at the AACR conference in
Chicago. Upon arriving at the
conference, I was overwhelmed and in awe of the sheer number of people; Dr.
Feirer said there were around 30,000! On
Saturday and Sunday I had the opportunity to attend a couple of seminars. One of them, which was very informative, went
through the process of writing and publishing a journal article. The information I learned will be very helpful
if I decide to pursue a career in research and want to publish my findings. We also attended a seminar by Elizabeth
Blackburn on the Roles of the telomere
maintenance components in signaling pathways that are implicated in aging and
cancer. Elizabeth Blackburn was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with telomeres! One of the pieces of information I learned
from her seminar is that life expectancy (the rate at which the telomeres on
chromosomes shorten) is affected by both genetics and non-genetic influences
such as chronic psychological stress. I
also learned that in cancer cells, while telomeres are shorter than regular
body cells, telomerase maintains the telomere essentially making it immortal
while the telomeres in the regular body cell will continue to shorten. Out of the seminars we went to I definitely
enjoyed Elizabeth Blackburn’s the most because she spoke in a manner that was
easy to follow and the information she presented was very interesting!
We presented our poster on Monday, April 2, from
8:00am-12:00pm. We took turns standing
with the poster and answering the questions of people who came to look over our
research. We had a variety of people ask
us about our poster; from graduate students to professors to physicians. There were also a variety of questions asked
about our procedures, the mechanism our treatments affected in the cells, and
my favorite, how many grapes a person would have to eat to get the same
concentration of resveratrol we were treating our cells with! A couple of people recommended journal
articles for us to read that related to our research, and one man we spoke with
offered a lot of advice about graduate school and how to decide whether or not
we should pursue a career in research.
We also, from talking to so many different people, have an idea of the
direction we would like to take our research in next year!
While we were not standing with our poster, we were able to
walk around the conference area to look at other research posters or visit the
vender booths. There were so many
posters! While I know cancer research is
a popular and growing field, I had no idea until I attended the conference
truly how large the cancer research field is!
I am so grateful I had the opportunity to attend the AACR conference,
and I definitely hope to go again in the future!
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Russ Feirer
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