Bioinformatics, what is that? Well, it's essentially biology with a computer. Before starting grad school I worked as a research tech in a biochemistry lab. That meant working with living cells, various chemicals, and all sorts of interesting devices, some of which were older than I am. But I've always been attracted to mathematics and programming. Throughout my Ph.D. I've focused on working with computers to explain biological phenomena. My first paper systematically analyzed simple intracellular signaling systems to show how substrates competing for different enzymes could influence each other (Preprint PDF). Since then I've expanded this work to other biological systems.
We're now gearing up for the beginning of the Fall semester; classes start next Monday. The summer has been pretty busy. The bulk of it was grant-writing season for my advisor, Eric. As such I kept out of the way, working on my projects. But the highlight of it, academically, was the q-bio conference in Santa Fe, NM (q-bio stands for "quantitative biology"). That was August 7th-10th. Just before heading down we were rushing around trying to finish up our posters and various travel details. The lab had 3 accepted posters, including mine, and a contributed talk from Eric on my work this year.
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| Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the view from St. John's College, where q-bio was held. |
Since this was my second time at this conference, I was far more relaxed this year when it came to interacting with others there. I made it a point to sit around people I did not know, introduce myself confidently, and talk science. I met lots of interesting people, such as a physics professor who wrote a mathematics textbook for his graduate students to use and a guy who was interested in doing a post-doc in our department.
I was scheduled to present my poster on the first night. What made it interesting, as it did last year, was that night, before the poster session, the lab went out to a New Mexican cafe for dinner. Dinner included a lot of green chile and a strong margarita. Tequila and the thinner air of Santa Fe made me kind of warm when the posters began. But once I got into explaining my work I got clear-headed quickly. It was a non-stop science-athon. As soon as I finished explaining my project to one person, which takes quite awhile, I'd get another to step up. After 3+ hours of that I was exhausted.
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| Me at my poster. And, yes, bowties are cool. |
The next day was just as busy. Eric gave his talk on my work that morning. The coolest thing happened immediately after: another professor turned around and told me that my work explained one phenomenon he noticed and he was going to cite my paper in his talk and manuscript. That was exciting. That night Eric and Zaikun, one of my lab mates, gave their posters. I spent much of the time talking with other professors, listening to them talk about their work, and in turn talking about my work and future plans. The rest of the conference got kind of blurry due to exhaustion: there is only so much science I can focus on, and the conference is like drinking from a fire hydrant.
Since getting back, Eric and I have been working hard at getting the paper for this paper put together so we can submit it for publishing. I've also spent some time organizing a dinner for the department so we can meet the new students and our new faculty member. It's becoming more and more of a tradition; Eric started it his first year with a pizza party, and last year we all met at Free State Brewery for dinner. This year we're heading to The Burger Stand, and it looks like we'll have a good complement of students there, plus all of the faculty will probably be there as well.
But here's the to the start of the new semester and new school year!
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