The Biophysical Society joined over 4,000 graduate and undergraduate students in celebrating the 40th birthday of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)at its National Conference in San Antonio, Texas. This was the sixth year that the Biophysical Society participated in the conference provided the Society the opportunity to introduce the field of biophysics to undergraduate science students from around the country and let them know about the Society’s Summer Course in Biophysics.
Luis Marky, University of Nebraska and BPS minority affairs committee member, chaired the biophysics symposia, “Cutting-Edge Research in the Electrostatics of Nucleic Acids, Proteins and Their Interactions,” at the meeting. Speakers included Blanca Barquera, Rensselaer Institute of Technology; Thomas Truskett, University of Texas at Austin; Lauren Webb, University of Texas Austin; and Marky.
For the first time this year, BPS featured the Biomolecular Discovery Dome which showed an eight minute film entitled Trypanosoma: Parasite Kills Millions in Africa and the Americas. The dome allowed participants to get a 3-D visual of the parasite and learn about the biophysical research into the disease it causes—Sleeping Sickness.
In addition to the symposia and the Discovery Dome, BPS also sponsored four SACNAS undergraduate poster awards and two travel awards to the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. The awardees were selected from over 1,000 posters during the SACNAS poster sessions. The winners of the SACNAS poster award are Gelson Pagan Diaz, University of Puerto Rico; Joseph Wayne Fowler, UCLA; Commodore St. Germain, San Francisco State University, and Stephen Kudaleck, UC Irvine. The winners of the travel award to the BPS Annual Meeting are Melissa Hernandez, and Gelson Pagan Diaz.
Did we see you at SACNAS? Let us know by commenting below. We can’t wait for the 2014 SACNAS National Conference in Los Angeles, California!