Achievement

Encouraging IGERT trainees, especially first year students, to attend scientific conferences has been a rewarding and successful educational strategy again this year. In addition to opportunities to present their results and to network with researchers in their fields, students learn about professional activities associated with careers in science. Six IGERT students (4 from ISU and 2 from NMSU) attended the Annual New Mexico Bioinformatics Symposium (NMBIS 2008), in Santa Fe, NM. Eight IGERT students presented their discoveries at the Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology Conference (ISMB 2008) in Toronto, Canada. In addition, one IGERT trainee, S. Saraswathi, a non-traditional PhD student and member of the ISCB Student Organization, encouraged our trainees to participate in a student-run poster session. This spring, five ISU IGERT students served as reviewers and selected abstracts for the Student Session to be held at the 2009 ISMB Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.