BPS 2023 was the busiest conference I have ever attended. It wasn’t easy to find time to attend professional career development and networking events in addition to scientific sessions, but I managed to attend some. Here are my top three most-fun events organized by the Education Committee this year!
1) Undergraduate Student Pizza Breakfast: As a postdoc, I was invited to this session as a panelist. I got to talk to lots of brilliant undergraduate students and answer their questions about achieving, exploring different career pathways and succeeding in graduate school. This was actually my second time being a panelist in this session. I felt that every year I got more and more interesting questions!
We talked about a lot of things, but I made a list of some that I kept repeating:
No matter what you plan after your graduation, keep in mind that your path in science doesn’t have to be as linear as someone else’s. Follow your passion, keep learning and improving yourself!
Try learning about different subfields of biophysics and explore what you like and what you don’t like before graduate school. Take advantage of summer internships offered by universities and national laboratories!
Do not be scared of learning how to code. Learning how to code allows you to improve your problem solving skills and helps you think logically and automate repetitive tasks!
If you are an undergraduate student getting ready for an Annual Meeting, you should attend this session. Trust me－ you’ll have fun!
2) Biophysics 101 Incorporating Bayesian Inference and Artificial Intelligence Approaches into Biophysics: If you are a computational biophysicist like me, I am sure you appreciated this year’s Biophysics 101 talks.
The first speaker was Dr. Pilar Cossio, from Flatiron Institute, who talked about Bayesian Inference in Biophysics. She started with some history (where does the p-value come from?!) and demonstrated Bayes’s rule with a few examples. Finally, she told us about Bayesian frameworks for interpreting biophysical experiments (like NMR and cryo-EM) and simulations.
The second speaker was Dr. Pratyush Tiwary from University of Maryland. He talked about Artificial Chemical Intelligence. His talk covered several applications of Artificial Intelligence in biophysics. The examples he presented demonstrated the need for AI in biophysics due to its predictive power and Dr. Tiwary stressed that AI approaches are way more powerful when integrated with statistical mechanics and molecular simulations or experiments. Overall, it was an inspiring talk, inviting many of us to learn more about artificial intelligence.
Did you miss the session? Don’t worry! It was recorded and can be accessed through the BPS’s webpage. During the Biophysics week, the recording will be made public for everyone. Both speakers had a slide of resources to learn Bayesian Inference and Artificial Intelligence methods and their slides can be found here.
3) PUI Network Dinner: I have been a member of the Education Committee since 2018. Our committee met online several times during the pandemic. As a result of those meetings, we launched the Primarily Undergraduate Institutes (PUI) Network for faculty who work at PUIs and for early career researchers who want to work in PUIs. This network communicates over the PUI network blog on the website and organizes Idea Mash meetings over Zoom regularly. Those events are fun; don’t miss them if you like teaching as much as I do!
Last year at the Annual Meeting, a few of us came together for lunch. This year, around 20 members met for dinner. I met with Dr. Gianmarc Grazioli from San Jose State University who teaches computational chemistry. We talked about teaching computational biophysics, online teaching and preparing fun teaching materials! Check out his science videos on Youtube (@GianmarcGrazioliPhD). I also met with Dr. Dixon Woodbury from Brigham Young University; we talked about membrane fusion! It was a really fun night. If you want to attend regular events to talk with biophysics educators, you can join the PUI network from the BPS webpage.
Including the events organized by the Education Committee, the full list of professional development and networking events during the Annual Meeting is listed here for your reference. Don’t forget to check these events next year!