On October 29th, 2011, Brandeis undergrads Lamia Harper (’12), Charity Frempomaa (’12), Sadrach Pierre (’13) and Carlos Pérez (’13) from our local SACNAS chapter represented Brandeis at the Annual Conference of the Society for Advancing Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) in San José, California. Lamia and Sadrach both received awards for their research poster presentations. Lamia, who works in the Paradis lab, won an award in the Cellular and Molecular Biology category for her poster: Gene Discovery: Protein Kinases that Affect Synapse Development in the Mammalian CNS. Sadrach, who works in the Thomas lab in Chemistry, was awarded under the Biochemistry category for his poster: Sulfoamide Boronic Acids as Inhibitors of Beta-Lactamase.
Fostering leaders into a new scientific generation
Brandeis SACNAS Chapter Symposium
Saturday, March 26, 2011
10:00 am-3:00 pm
Shapiro Science Campus lobby
On March 26th the Brandeis SACNAS chapter will be holding their 2nd Brandeis SACNAS Chapter Symposium 2011: Fostering leaders into a new scientific generation. This year, we hope to expand our circle of influence even farther as we look forward to hosting students and mentors from Brandeis and other institutions in the greater Boston Region. We want to create a forum for students to network and learn about the different pathways that the sciences have to offer.
This year we will have Dr. Daniel Colon-Ramos, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology at Yale University, talk about his journey from early undergraduate to PhD. Dr. Jim Morris from Brandeis will discuss his track towards earning his MD/PhD at Harvard Medical School. Lastly, we will also hear from our own chapter President Kerwin Vega, fourth year undergraduate, as he speaks of his first steps towards pursuing a career in science and his networking experiences thus far. We will also host a Career Development Panel where professionals from various scientific backgrounds will briefly speak of their personal professional anecdotes as well as answer any questions. There will also be a poster session for students to present their work.
- Register for the event on the SACNAS chapter website
- For information about the event or if interested in presenting a poster, email us at brandeis.sacnas@gmail.com
Connecting with underrepresented minorities in the sciences
For the past six years, Brandeis has been participating yearly at two undergraduate-oriented conferences in an effort to recruit the best minority students for the life sciences graduate programs. These two conferences are: SACNAS (Society for advancing Hispanics/chicanos and Native American in science) and ABRCMS (Annual Biomedical research conference for minority students).
This year SACNAS was held at Anaheim, CA during September 30 and October 3. Professor Jim Morris and 2 graduate students represented Brandeis and interacted with post-docs, graduate students, pre college teachers, undergrads and other 300 exhibitors. The theme of this year conference was Science, Technology & Diversity for a Sustainable Future. In addition, SACNAS combined efforts with MAES (Society for Mexican American engineers and scientists) in order to make the experience more interdisciplinary.
For the past 30 years SACNAS has been holding this conference to enforce the underrepresented minority population in science to pursue advanced degrees, careers, and positions of leadership. A Brandeis SACNAS chapter was created over a year ago, in order to provide information and give access to professional tools to all the undergrads interested in pursuing careers in science. This year, the Brandeis SACNAS chapter was recognized during the meeting as a new chapter, and 9 of our undergraduates participated in the conference; 2 of them Angel Garcia and Kerwin Vega, presented their research in the poster sessions. You can also connect with the Brandeis chapter on Facebook.
– Yaihara Fortis
A Taste of Don
Even when we are trying to take a break from lab and chemosensory research on the weekends, it somehow ends up right in our laps. Riding the T we found in one of the ubiquitous discarded papers this article about the science of taste that highlights our own Don Katz, doing his part to mix business and pleasure this week at one of Boston’s premier cocktail destinations:
http://digboston.com/taste/2010/10/science-of-taste/
– Yaihara Fortis and Benjamin Rubin
(editor’s note: the fundraiser is on Wed, Oct 27, see http://lupecboston.com/2010/10/14/science-of-taste-seminar/)
