The American Heart Association is currently running its Basic Cardiovascular Sciences (BCVS) Scientific Sessions, and this year it is being held in New Orleans. Both Emily and Su-Yi are presenting their research in poster sessions. 

Here is the program: BCVS 2015

A poster session is sort of like a pop-up flea market (a bit more organized) to facilitate the presentation of a large number of studies all at once, allowing meeting attendees to browse around and spend as much time as they wish (or not) looking at the presentations, and also have a chance to speak directly with the lead author. Its also a good opportunity for students and fellows to network and perhaps make connections for future positions. To this day I have colleagues and friends that I met because their poster just happened to be set up next to mine. Below, see Emily after having just set up her poster. Looks like her "neighbor" has not yet arrived.

Posters can be even more challenging to present than a formal lecture, since an entire study needs to be condensed onto a relatively small presentation board (that would be the "poster") in a manner that is clear and comprehensible to a passing audience. It needs to be "catchy" enough so that it grabs the audience's attention, but deliver the message in a clear manner so that one does not need to spend more than about 5 minutes looking it over (unless perhaps its really directly in your area, or even perhaps your competition!). A well done poster can be completely understood, primarily using figures and graphics, rather than text, even if the author is not present to explain it (posters are typically left up for a day or two). It can be exhausting to present a poster, but that would be a good sign (compared to having nobody stop by to discuss it!).

It seems a shame that Emily and Su-Yi had to travel all the way to New Orleans just to spend several days holed up in a convention center doing nothing but talking science. Well actually, ...I suppose they might get a chance to poke around the French Quarter just a bit. I told Emily it was closed this week, but I'm pretty sure she did not believe me. In case that gets out of hand, an early morning visit to Cafe Du Monde should do the trick.

When she returns, Emily will be posting pictures from the lab picnic from last week. 

OK, as promised, here you get an idea about the walking lane signs I was so fond of in Helsinki. This was very nicely sent to me by Nicholas Downes, who is carrying out his PhD studies at the University of Eastern Finland. In fact, the specific graphic I was seeing in Helsinki tended to be painted right onto the sidewalk, but you get the idea. The design is the same.

Now, how did Nick happen to find my request for a photo of the walking parent/child image? It could be because our blog is already so world famous, but....probably not. In fact, Nick went to the same College as Emily Mercer a few years back in the UK, and so picked up my request from Emily's Facebook page. (see Emily on our People page).

This is a great thing about science, as there is almost always someone who can help you out and is only 1 or 2 degrees of separation away.  About a week ago, we received the generous gift of a new vector for efficient homologous recombination to create conditional alleles in zebrafish embryos, from David Grunwald in Utah, about which I had seen him discuss at a meeting in California earlier this year.  Julien Ablain, a postdoc from Len Zon's lab in Boston, just promised to send us his new vector for efficiently generating tissue-specific Crispr/Cas knockout/edits in zebrafish. We just sent off a shipment of our transgenic gata4:gfp reporter fish to Leo Kurian's laboratory in Koln, Germany (hope customs is kind to them!). All of these things were swapped without any conditions and simply to promote the success of each others' science. Thanks Nick, David, Julien, and Len.

BTW, I did my postdoctoral training with Gary Felsenfeld, and Gary did his training with Linus Pauling. So my students are only 3 degrees of separation away from the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel Prizes (and we won't go into that whole Vitamin C thing).     Todd

Unfortunately, the lab picnic was canceled due to an irrational faith in weather forecasters. Try again next week. But we did want to say farewell to Deepika Rajaram, who was visiting on a 6-week internship, from her program at Anna University in Chennai, India. Its very tough to get much accomplished in 6 weeks, but Deepika worked very hard, studying under the mentorship of Ritu Kumar, and I think she learned quite a lot, and also was able to help move along one of Ritu's projects. Keep in touch, Deepika.

Our laboratory is comprised of investigators who hail from all over the world. This includes not only India (Ritu) but also Colombia (Miriam), Spain (Jessica), China (Yahui), Korea (Heejin), Taiwan (Su-Yi), the UK (Emily, Sarah), and even the mysterious kingdom of New Jersey (Ingrid). In the US we also represent the Pacific Islands of Hawaii (Suveg), the Rockies (Bran), the midwest (Alice, Todd), and a scattering of east-coasters (Susanna, Arielle, Karen, Ellen). Of course, this is New York City, so its normal to be around a cosmopolitan mix, but science is truly an international pursuit, and one of the best things about working in a lab is meeting interesting people from all over the world. Importantly, this has a major positive impact on the potluck picnic menu!

You might notice, however, that we are not so well balanced when it comes to gender. You may think that STEM is generally biased against women, and perhaps it is. However, we currently have 14 women and 4 men (and only if you include Nate who is currently in Ithaca, and me, who is rarely allowed to carry out actual experiments). Well, there is no conspiracy here, and lab membership is dynamic and always shifting as people move in and out. We just want good people, and don't care at all how they identify. However, it is true that women are generally quite well represented in our specific field of developmental biology (while it is also true that at the highest levels of academia the balance shifts again to men, for reasons that should be debated). 

Why do women do so well in developmental biology? One could speculate either nature (they have a natural affinity for the discipline) or nurture (they have role models that inspire). Personally (while stupidly wading into a topic on which I have absolutely no qualifications to comment; note to self: really should stick to cardiovascular development) I would argue for nurture. Developmental biology (and related molecular genetics) is a relatively young scientific discipline, and many of the great "mothers" of the field were...women. We can point to brilliant scientists like Hilde "shoulda had Spemann's Nobel" Mangold, Barbara McClintock, Rosa Beddington, and Nicole LeDouarin. Leaders today include Christiane Nusslein-Volhard,  Brigid Hogan, and Janet Rossant. Right here at the Tri-institution we have Alex Joyner, Elaine Fuchs, Kathryn Anderson, Heidi Stuhlmann, Kat Hadjantonakis, Cori Bargmann, Mary Hatten, Liz Lacy, etc. (sorry I don't mean to leave anyone out as Im just free-associating). 

So, while it must have been horribly difficult for the founders, today there are plenty of great women scientists who serve as leaders and can be role models to inspire the next generation. Maybe eventually it will not even be needed, as it becomes less of an issue. Just read their papers, that should be inspiration enough!   Todd