2013 ASCB Annual Meeting - #ASCB2013

Emily reflects on her experience of the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology, a particularly large and often daunting conference. In this fascinatingly personal post, she compares her experiences as a novice at ASCB2011 to the greater feeling of belonging that she experienced at ASCB2013. Whilst also expressing her views of some of the high points of this years thrilling conference.

Name: Emily Kurdzo

Date: 14th - 18th December 2013

Location: New Orleans, LA, USA

Website: http://www.ascb.org/ascbpost/index.php/live-from-ascb-2013

I previously attended the ASCB Annual Meeting in 2011. My mentor had sent me without demands of submitting an abstract so that I could get a feel for what it meant be part of the cell biology world. The novelty of that situation, my inexperience in the field, and the fact that I had to take a final exam the day after my return made that first experience exciting but stressful. I had felt overwhelmed by the diverse collection of specialist terms thrown around by presenters. I still had exams to work for and hadn't even begun to focus on where my own research might lead.

Two years later, things felt very different, my work leapt forward in the few months before the meeting in August. I had collected and processed enough data to verify the results and conclusions I wanted to present at the meeting (including a night snowed-in at lab, that I spent collecting data). So when December came around I eagerly set off to New Orleans with my poster in tow. Saturday afternoon I picked up my name badge, my complimentary Millipore tote filled with the requisite free goodies, and dove into the first Mini-Symposium I had scheduled for myself using the handy ASCB 2013 iPhone app (a near essential tool at a conference this mind-bogglingly large). I settled into the Dynamics and Mechanics of Mitosis session, took out my composition notebook, and wholly expected to be in over my head, as I had been two years prior.

The first talk was easy to understand, and pretty exciting at that. The presenter showed us video of a laser cutting a spindle fiber in a metaphase cell and explained their hypothesis for what was going on in the cell while we watched the now orphaned chromatid and severed fiber move towards its "home" spindle pole rather than snap to the other side of the cell (as would be expected in a system under tension). The metaphase spindle was repairing itself before our eyes. Then I found the second talk easy to understand as well, as well as the third... It slowly dawned on me how far I had grown as a scientist over the past two years. My efforts to learn about the cell cycle were coming to fruition. I could understand almost everything the speakers were explaining - and their work was so exciting to me! I fervently took down notes, knowing much of what I was witnessing was new, unpublished data.

That evening I attended the Keynote Speeches. I had really been looking forward to J. Craig Venter's talk in particular. He didn't disappoint. The talk started off with the standard science his company is famous for - powerful molecular biology, re-creating a genome, producing the first "manufactured" organism. Then he moved into work I had not heard about previously... biological teleportation. He wandered into this so nonchalantly, like he was describing what he ate this morning, but I couldn't help but feel like he was describing his experience as a scientist in a parallel universe - where teleportation of DNA and organisms from Mars exist, where vaccines to a new pandemic virus can be downloaded and printed on your household 3D printer and administered to family members at home. The kind of world that a biologist envisions for the future. I had to glance around. What century is this!? To my relief, everyone else seemed as awestruck as me. He successfully sparked that child-like wonder in science to which I cling so fondly; on which, many researchers depend. I started feeling at home amongst my fellow scientists. Yes, I belong here, I thought to myself.

The next few days became a dreamy blur of wonderful talks and conversations with poster presenters. I learned about inward chromatin forces, centromere tethering, what controls chromosome compaction and spindle length in cells of different sizes, and how aneuploidy affects cells and autophagy. I attended some Round-Table Discussions and Info Sessions to get advice on how to fulfill my career dreams and how to write a successful manuscript. I even learned how to use Twitter for professional purposes to help break down the barrier between scientists and the general public. I attended the headline talks provided by two of the 2013 Nobel Laureates in Medicine or Physiology; both were inspiring as a young scientist, but how can you not get inspired by a Laureate? And of course, I explored a bit of the surrounding neighborhood of the conference center to find some delicious New Orleans food and see what the French Quarter is all about (Bourbon Street was pretty much as I had expected).

Then it was Tuesday afternoon, and it was time to present my poster. As I arrived at my poster, I looked around and took in the intriguing science surrounding me. I was thankful to be the only one studying my topic in budding yeast, but I was thrilled to see promising results from experiments done in fruit flies, C. elegans, and even, unusually, spider spermatocytes. It was refreshing to feel like I was amongst a group of peers, and not superiors, as I had in 2011. It was even better that we were mutually very encouraged that our findings complemented each other so well. Presenting my poster was a blast - much more enjoyable and thrilling than I had anticipated when my stomach was too knotted to eat lunch that day. After the session was over, I confidently strode away with my poster in hand, feeling a bit more like a mature scientist than I had that morning. I quickly munched a Snickers as I ducked into the next Mini-Symposium: Chromosome Segregation. I was home.

The next morning the crowds began to dwindle; the talks became harder to concentrate on as I anticipated my flight to New England for a holiday spent with family. ASCB 2013 was a great meeting for those beginning to dip their toes into the deep end of cell biology. There's just so much to see, share and enjoy. It was a great opportunity to build a wider familiarity with my interests in science, but it also served as an important resource for networking, collaboration, and expanding knowledge about the next career step. Best of all, ASCB gave me that recharged and refreshed feeling that comes with expanding one's understanding of science and rediscovering the child-like wonder that brought us all here in the first place.