91影库

The 91影库 and Molecular Biology’s provides up to $1,000 for travel expenses to attend the society’s annual meeting. But it’s more than that.

“I would really say that getting the award helped me to embrace science and research, because it opened my eyes to the endless, endless possibilities of research,” Samuel Okpechi said.

Chioma Aloh said the award was “a continuous reward for me.”

The award is about making connections at the meeting as much as it is a financial boost to get there. Students from historically underrepresented backgrounds often find it challenging to network with more senior scientists and researchers. That’s part of what this award addresses. This year’s 24 recipients had multiple opportunities to spend time with scientists at all career stages — and sitting on the sidelines was not an option.

Breakfast with bingo

In Philadelphia in April, the connections began with a lively breakfast that included a special get-to-know-you game of bingo, where attendees had to find out about each other by checking off boxes about family, pets, hobbies and other nonscience interests.

“Bingo was a neat way to just get total chaos in the room,” Cameron Lee–Lopez said. “Everybody was running around asking, ‘Do you play an instrument? Do you do this? Do you do that?’ And as soon as you hit off one of their checkboxes, everybody would swarm over to you, and you’d be suddenly taking part in 10 conversations at once.”

Those conversations led to exchanges of more information — and business cards. Aloh said one card was particularly memorable. “I met a postdoc who had a card (that) had her face on it.”

The postdoc invited Aloh to attend her presentation on liposomes. Because, of course, all conversations at the annual meeting eventually turn to science.

Sam Okpechi ran into a team that runs the proteomics core at their institution. “I was trying to explain to them what I do,” he said, “and they quickly told me that’s similar to what they do … So it was easy for us to communicate. Our research questions are different, but the tool is the same.”

As a result of the breakfast, Alhaji Janneh opened a Twitter account. Before, he said, “I didn’t know Twitter was something very important in the scientific community.”

Good science and good food

In addition to displaying their posters in the big exhibition hall, DEI award recipients get to share their science in a more intimate setting — the Maximizing Access (formerly Minority Affairs) Committee’s evening reception. While guests balanced plates of donuts and sliders, the 24 posters drew intense interest.

“I forgot to eat,” Janneh said. He had expected one or two people but drew a nonstop crowd. “And then I was talking, talking throughout the whole night.”

Most people were interested in hearing about Janneh’s research, but a few invited him to contact them about joining their labs or coming to their universities as a postdoc.

Lindsey Backman especially enjoyed her interactions with undergraduates.

“I felt like half of my time was spent just talking about the summer research programs I did as an undergrad that got me into grad school,” she said. “And that part was really fun.”

Backman said she’s stayed in touch with a number of students interested in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s summer research program, which, like the DEI award, is geared toward students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Aloh also enjoyed interacting with younger students. “They were doing research quite similar to mine, and they wanted to know what next steps to take,” she said. “It was kind of fun, when after all your work, somebody looked at you, and you’re the expert.”

But Aloh didn’t spend time with just undergrads. She explained her poster to one visitor only to learn later that it was outgoing 91影库President Toni Antalis.

“She was talking to me about my research,” Aloh said. “She asked if I wanted to do a postdoc. Then I asked her about her own research.”

Lee–Lopez also had a memorable conversation with a principal investigator, one who shared some common ground: “He’s looking in mammalian systems, whereas I look at bacterial, but he works with a protein that’s very similar to mine and the way it behaves with redox chemistry. So we have that connection there.”

Okpechi found the reception more intimate than the general poster session. “It was more of a family coming together,” he said. “The atmosphere was fun — was lively. Also, the food was great.”

But more important to him was talking about science.

“I communicated what I do on a daily basis and communicated what keeps me up at night,” he said, adding that he focused on three topics: exchanging information about research to see if he and whoever he was talking to had common ground, then finding out how they felt about their institutions and labs, and finally discussing the future of research “and what would be the hot jobs of the future.”

Backman also wove careers into her conversation with former MAC chairman of Pennsylvania State University, who works in her field. In March, Backman was months from starting an independent lab, and Booker wanted to hear her ideas. The two talked even after the reception ended, and Booker introduced Backman to other faculty members.

She was also happy to mingle with scientists at a variety of career stages, from undergrads to PIs. “There wasn’t a weird separation of all o