Second Early Career Symposium at IBBR
In honor of Postdoc Appreciation Week, the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research recently hosted their Second Annual Early Career Symposium at IBBR. Over 120 attendees from the University System of Maryland, NIST, NIH, FDA, Johns Hopkins, AstraZeneca and many more gathered for a day of scientific research, a poster session and networking.
The day consisted of 11 talks by postdocs and graduate students on a wide range of research fields involving investigations of viruses, animal proteins, plant proteins, and cancer biology using a wide array of techniques such as mass spectrometry, CryoEM, NMR, X-ray Crystallography, and biophysics. The early career fellows who presented their research represented Penn State University, NIH, NIST, IBBR, University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Maryland Baltimore, and University of Maryland College Park.
The keynote was given by Dr. Peter Kwong, Chief of the Structural Biology Section at the Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University. Dr. Kwong has pioneered and substantially contributed to the understanding of the interaction of HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins with receptor CD4 and neutralizing antibodies. His talk on "The HIV-1 Vaccine and Structural Biology” described a promising antibody-to-vaccine paradigm to achieve an effective HIV-1 vaccine, and how insight of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein trimer at atomic-level leads to this concept.
“The symposium provided a great venue for high-quality scientific talks by early career scientists on the application of exciting new technologies such as cutting-edge cryogenic electron microscopy and mass spectrometry to problems of high biomedical relevance such as cancer biology, vaccine design, and the development of antivirals, to name a few. Furthermore, this event brought together scientists from several different disciplines that led to new collaborations, including for my own research group,” stated Dr. Saif Hasan.
The event would not be possible without the organizing committee who worked tirelessly planning the details of the day: Chris Krauss (Chair), Sharan Karade (Treasurer), Debajit Dey, Suruchi Singh, Salman Shahid and Saif Hasan (Faculty Advisor). IBBR would also like to thank the sponsors for their generous support: SPT Labtech, MiTeGen, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Millipore Sigma, GenScript, Meso Scale Diagnostics, Sino Biological and Nano Science. The attendees enjoyed visiting their booths and learning more about career opportunities in the industry.
We are looking forward with much anticipation and excitement to host next year’s event to be held on September 12, 2024!
For more details on the symposium, please click here.
About IBBR’s Postdoctoral Program
The IBBR Postdoc Program operates with the philosophy of building “team science” in education and workforce to achieve the overall IBBR mission. The program, like IBBR, focuses on collaborative research involving basic science that directly impacts the advancement of therapeutic development, measurement technology, and other biotechnology applications.
IPP Fellow project teams are designed with the career goals of the IPP Fellow and project priorities in mind. A group of mentors and scientists are chosen for this team by the IPP Fellow’s primary mentor who can be from academic, government, and/or industrial laboratories throughout UMD, NIST, and the I-270 corridor. IPP Fellows will leverage their research opportunity using highly specialized infrastructure and expertise within IBBR, including the previously mentioned IBBR Commons.
If you would like to learn more about the IBBR Postdoc Program, or if you are interested in joining the symposium organizing committee for next year you can send an email to IBBR-IPP@umd.edu for more information.