2010 Biophysical Society

The afternoon poster sessions are one of the best things about the Biophysical Society meeting.  On Sunday afternoon, Kate presented her poster, which details her results on using our vibrational probe in the animicrobial peptide CM15.  While standing in front of her poster, she talked to several of the real, actual world experts on this sort of thing (see below).  For an undergraduate to have this experience several months before her senior thesis is over can be transformative and invaluable (maybe not so transformative for Kate since she is already a convert, heading to grad school, etc.).  The society facilitates this by scheduling almost nothing besides posters during the early afternoon, and since all of the posters are in one big room, the “family” atmosphere really makes it possible for anyone, undergraduates included, to carry on a high-level scientific conversation with people who really know what they are talking about.

So here are my reasons why the Biophysical Society meeting is a great one for undergraduates:

1. the poster sessions (see above)
2. the size of the meeting: just big enough that there is always more than you know, just small enough that you can actually locate people
3. the interdisciplinarity: no getting stuck in artificial departmental boundaries at this meeting.
4. the posters!
5. the internationality of the meeting (see next post)