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American Association for Cancer Research Reflection
KateLyn White
Biology & Psychology Majors
Attending
the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting was an amazing
experience. Not only was my research
team and I able to attend numerous lectures and presentations, but we were also
able to stay in the heart of Chicago.
None of this would have been possible without the assistance of SAT
fund.
One
of the most interesting talks we were able to sit in on was that of Nobel Prize
recipient Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn. She
was discussing the relationship between aging and telomere shortening. While this is not what our particular
research is focused on, it I not every day one get to see a Nobel Prize winner.
She is a great role model of a strong woman who excelled in a male dominated
field.
We
were also ale to attend a lecture on how to write a paper for a scientific
journal. Since this is one of the future
goals for our lab, this was an extremely informative presentation. We learned about trivial matters, such as
determining order of authorship and more pertinent issues, like how to
accurately display statistical information and format data. We also learned the steps in the publication
process from an actual AACR Journal Editor.
This included tips on choosing peer reviewers as well as which journal
to submit to.
Seeing
the posters from researchers around the world was one of the coolest
experiences I have had through out college.
It was fascinating to see what other labs were working on and how there
research related to what we had been doing here. There were investigators that had been doing
similar research with different cell lines and protocols. There were also people who were already
starting clinical trials with their treatment methods. It was interesting to se research that was
just starting out all the way to that which was being used on human
subjects. By looking through the posters
we were able to get a feel for what treatment and pathways were ‘trending’ in
this field and where the next big breakthrough may lie.
Being
able to present our research along side post doctorates and professors was an
amazing and humbling experience. We were
able to see all of our hard work come together on this day and see just how
much more work was yet to be done. We
received a great deal of positive feedback and were pleasantly surprised by the
number of people interested in our work.
This
was an absolutely amazing experience and I would like to thank the
Collaborative again for making it possible.
Faculty
sponsor: Dr. Russ Feirer
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