Shortly after the Springtime 10k (we’re talking like hours lol) I flew up to Philly, for a conference called Experimental Biology. Essentially, it’s a bunch of science organizations that get together and have days of research sessions, some other meet and greet type sessions, and poster sessions. I hit delays on the way in and out, the 13-hour travel days leaving me a bit exhausted. I had an amazing long run on the Schuylkill River Trail, then anther day ran over to Jersey across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Running is my absolute favorite way to explore a city, I’m so glad I had a chance to get out and see the city/nearby areas.
I heard some great talks though, despite the lecture halls in some of the ones I wanted to attend being so crowded I had to choose another. Meeting with tenured people in industry was the one “meet and greet” I went to and it was enlightening to hear that some of the things I thought about working in industry were fallacies. Things like you get handed a project and do not have creativity and then you don’t see project to completion were essentially the highlights that I appreciated being made aware were not true, at least with certain companies.
The last day was the poster competition. Such a busy auditorium! There were so many people walking around, the 2 hours I stood by my poster went by in a flash. I also had a very interesting guy (with poster) across from me. It’s always hard finding people in your niche area of research (which is cultured vascular smooth muscle cells and a mouse model of atherosclerosis to study risk factors, aging and cardiovascular disease), so I appreciated talking to him and the others that stopped by that were also in my niche.
After a pandemic has filled the
large majority of my time in graduate school at FSU, and I was hence not able
to attend any conferences, I was so glad we had the grant funds and I was able
to leave the lab projects in good hands to be able to spend several days at
this conference in Philly!
I hope to graduate in December of this year, and pursue a post-doctoral fellowship, which means I'll work in a lab under a mentor to gain more experience. This path is appealing to me as research has become a passion of mine!
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