A Successful Postbac Poster Day: Communication, Community, and Excitement about Science in Frederick

To the final team of Scientific Library staff, the library was both a physical location and an intangible purpose, a second home and a calling. The facility may have been measured in square feet, but to its employees, the Scientific Library was measured in experiences with each other and the patrons they helped.

The Frederick Postbac Committee, comprising NCI Frederick postbaccalaureate fellows, held their second annual Frederick Postbac Poster Day in March. The event, organized by the Committee and collaborating staff, showcased postbac research over the past year and gave postbacs an opportunity to practice sharing their science with an audience of their peers. All NCI employees were invited to attend, and the Frederick Postbac Committee was pleased with the turnout, which included postbacs, postdocs, and senior scientists alike.

A group of employees gathered this Earth Day for a brief ceremony to dedicate NCI Frederick’s Moon Tree and celebrate the spirit of scientific discovery. The campus’ Moon Tree is a sweetgum sapling. It was cultivated from a collection of seeds carried into lunar orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft during the 2022 Artemis I mission.

As the 1990s arrived, the Scientific Library at NCI Frederick was a day-and-night operation, a bustling nexus of information and resources. While the next 30 years would bring major changes to operations and resources alike, the library wouldn’t lose its stride.

Academic researchers, along with scientists at NCI Frederick, are repurposing a harmless bacterial virus to reactivate dormant HIV-infected T cells—a type of white blood cell—for destruction. Their proof-of-concept study, published in iScience, is an early step in testing this platform.