Connecting at the CBC Science Day
CBC Science Day took place on Friday, April 22, 2011, at the Prentice Women’s Hospital Conference Center in downtown Chicago. Over 200 people attended this all day celebration of CBC supported science. The meeting included talks and posters describing research by CBC-Award teams, CBC supported infrastructure and core facilities, faculty Recruitment Awards, and the thesis projects of the CBC Scholars.
The day started with talks by recipients of CBC Lever Awards. These awards are given to Chicago-area recipients of large-scale, multi-institutional grants and are used to create infrastructure that is transformative and will benefit researchers at all three CBC institutions. Kevin White (UChicago) discussed the CBC-supported infrastructure that is associated with the Chicago Center for Systems Biology (CCSB), Sergey Kozmin (UChicago) described the cores funded by the CBC that are part of the Chicago Tri-Institutional Center for Chemical Methods and Library Development (CTCMLD) and David Eddington (UIC) discussed the infrastructure that will be part of the newest CBC funded Lever Award, Nanomaterials for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics: Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE). Neil Kelleher (NU), a recipient of a CBC Senior Investigator Recruitment Resources Award, gave the final talk of the morning in which he described the Proteomics Center for Excellence (PCE) located on the Northwestern Evanston campus.
The two hour poster session was highly interactive and included 57 posters, all of which described research supported by the CBC. Twenty two Catalyst teams, 6 Spark teams, 3 Lever teams, the CBC/UIC Proteomics and Informatics Service Facility, 8 CBC faculty Recruitment Award recipients, 13 CBC Scholars and members of the core facilities located at each of the 3 CBC universities all presented posters.
The afternoon session, Cool Technologies, was filled with information and discussions from CBC Spark and Catalyst Award recipients describing novel ways to study cellular dynamics, element-specific imaging, MRI visualization agents, protein-protein interactions, noncoding RNA and cellular signaling pathways.
True to the CBC mission, new seeds of collaboration were planted during CBC Science Day as scientists were finding new resources and meeting people to enhance their research. As one participant put it: “Friday’s CBC Science Day was truly great. The talks were great, but most importantly, those 2 hours of interaction time in the middle of the day were PURE GOLD. I know that I and others made some great connections that have the potential to become cross-Chicagoland collaborations!”
PHOTOS: David Eddington (UIC) takes questions following his talk: “Nanomaterials for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics: Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE)” (left); Neil Kelleher (NU) presents: “Proteomics Center of Excellence (PCE)” (right top); Poster Session. Photos (CBC)
SEE ALSO:
▸ CBC Science Day 2011 webpage