Each year at the Annual Meeting, we invite a group of attendees to share their experiences and perspectives on the Society's blog. Read about this year's crop of bloggers below, and then follow their adventures here on the blog throughout the meeting. 

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Charlotte Cialek

Hey BPS! I’m a PhD candidate in Colorado State University's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology department. I study gene regulation in living cells at the single-mRNA level in Dr. Tim Stasevich’s lab. Originally from Michigan, I already feel very “Colorado” after acquiring Rocky Mountain hobbies like skiing and rock climbing. I love sharing my passion for science to learners of all ages — from Girl Scouts to community college students to retirees.

 

 

 

 

Arun Richard Chandrasekaran

I was born and raised in Madurai, India, where I spent most of my time playing cricket. After my undergrad in Zoology and masters in Nanoscience, I moved to the US for my PhD with Ned Seeman at New York University. I'm now a research scientist at The RNA Institute at University at Albany, State University of New York. I work in Ken Halvorsen's lab on functionalizing DNA nanostructures and developing nucleic acid biosensors. I typically like to write about current research in DNA nanotechnology and the publication circuit in my blog Stranded (https://www.arunrichard.com/stranded). When I'm not doing science, I like to sing, write poetry, and watch horror movies. Connect with me in the twitterverse @arunrichardc or visit my website (https://www.arunrichard.com).

 

 

Po-Chia Chen

Life is a messy transition for me right now, and by extension this bio. After six years of experimental and computational structural biology postdoc'ing in Europe, I find myself back in Australia. Working remotely to finish publications, teaching protein biochemistry to students, and starting my backup plan (a degree in MTeach) while I wait for the next grant round. This kind of mess might echo with some of you! When it is not possible to satisfy the golden trio* of timing, location, networking needed to stay in our rat race, how long do we keep cycling? When should we trigger plan X? Let us explore at the Annual Meeting 2020. My planned blog posts will include the Travel Award night, exit paths, frontiers in education, and any VR/AR that I find on the way. I promise to leave any scientific gushing to these excellent fellow bloggers above and below. 

*converted Chinese idiom 天時、地利、人和

 

Satchal K. Erramilli

I am currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago in Tony Kossiakoff's lab. My research here involves the study of membrane protein conformational changes, which we probe and analyze using synthetic antibodies from phage display libraries. As I last attended the BPS Annual Meeting four years ago, I'm looking forward to catching up with several old colleagues and enjoying the Southern California weather. Given the volume of excellent ion channel and transporter symposia at this year's meeting, I'm anticipating a pretty hectic conference schedule, but I'm also hoping to find time to try out nearby restaurants. One of my favorite meeting activities is wandering through the poster aisles and just taking in the breadth of excellent work represented there. Please stop by my poster (1338-Pos, B406) and I would be happy to share with you my efforts to trap and visualize conformations of the magnesium channel CorA using synthetic antibodies and cryo-electron microscopy. This is the first time I'm presenting my postdoctoral research at the BPS annual meeting, which I've typically found to be an excellent forum for this type of work. The poster sessions in particular are well organized and I always find close by like-minded researchers with whom to wax rhapsodic over shared interests. See you all soon!

 

Declan Manning

My name is Declan, I am studying at The University of Liverpool in the UK and I am at the BPS 64^th Annual Meeting to present some of my research on store-operated calcium entry in human skin cells. My PhD project has me working on patch-clamp electrophysiology experiments to see how Orai and TRP channels control keratinocyte differentiation. It is my first time in the US! Whist I am here, I will blog my experiences travelling California, visiting labs, networking and engaging with as many researchers as possible in the field of calcium signalling!

 

 

 

 

 

Ashlee Plummer

I am originally from North Carolina and completed my undergraduate studies at North Carolina State University in Chemistry. I then attended Johns Hopkins University, where I obtained my Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and studied bacterial membrane protein biogenesis and biophysics. I am currently a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, where I use cryo-electron microscopy to study membrane protein structure/function. This will be my 6^th time attending the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting and I am excited to be a guest contributor for the BPS blog.

 

Rachit Shrivastava

I was born and brought up in a small town in central India. After doing my Undergrad and Masters at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, I worked as R&D Engineer at Central Transmission Utility of India (Powergrid Corp.) for 3 years. Currently I am doing my PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota where I am developing tools to better understand the mechanisms of intracellular transportation. Outside my academics, I am an amatuer Jazz drummer and like to watch sports, especially soccer.

 

Ioanna Stefani

I am a 4^th year PhD student at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Molecular biologist at the background, structural biochemist in training, protein enthusiast at heart. For my thesis, I am studying the protein-protein interactions of the synaptic vesicle release machinery with the guidance of Prof Dirk Fasshauer. If you are of course interested to listen to more on my project please come to my talk on Sunday the 16^th of February at 12:15, room 31ABC (113-Plat). BPS 2020 will be my first year both attending and presenting. Reading about the what you can do there from past events, I will be thrilled to attend exciting talks, receive feedback on my research and network with people with common interests -yes, that implies they like proteins! -.  Apart for science, I plan to explore San Diego as well! So, either join me at the exploration of the BPS 2020 and San Diego, or follow my updates at the blog and:

Twitter: @ioanna_stefani_

Email: [email protected]

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ioanna-stefani

Grigory Tagiltsev

Hello, my name is Grigory Tagiltsev. I am a 4th year graduate student at Weill Cornell Medical College. I am interested in membrane protein biophysics and state of the art imaging techniques for molecular and cell biology.