NCI and Frederick National Laboratory staff members were among those honored at the Spring Research Festival Awards Ceremony on May 28. The ceremony was the culmination of the festival, which was sponsored by the National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR), May 4–7.
Maj. Gen. Brian Lein, commanding general, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), presented the awards.
They came for a science lesson. They left with more.
The new Werner H. Kirsten student interns filed into the auditorium in Building 549 to expand their knowledge of fundamental laboratory practices, as part of the Science Skills Boot Camp. A panel of presenters instructed the attendees on skills such as reading scientific papers effectively, practicing proper research ethics, and conducting professional presentations.
Scientific Program Manager Ulrike Klenke, Ph.D., NIH Office of Intramural Training and Education, started the June event by welcoming her audience and encouraging the interns to break away from their familiar groups of classmates and to socialize with others from different schools and counties.
As part of NCI’s Research IT Strategic Planning efforts, a workshop was held on the NIH main campus in June. The main purpose of the workshop was to discuss ways to better integrate IT and informatics throughout NCI, and develop specific, high-level goals and related objectives that will drive the direction of IT and informatics support over the next five years.
The initiative to integrate NCI’s IT and informatics is a collaboration between the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT), Office of Scientific Operations, Data Management Services, and the IT Operations Group.
Class of 2014–2015 Werner H. Kirsten (WHK) student intern Rebecca “Natasha” Freed earned a fourth-place award in biochemistry at the 2015 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest high school science research competition in the world, according to the Society for Science & the Public’s website.
Freed described the event as “transformative experience,” where she was able to present her research to “experts, including Nobel laureates, as well as members of the general community and, of course, to [other students].”
Editor's note: Platinum Highlight articles are noteworthy publications selected periodically by Dr. Craig Reynolds, associate director, National Cancer Institute, from among the most recently published Platinum Publications.
When Alison Rattray and colleagues in the Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory (GRCBL) examined a mutant yeast cell they had isolated in a screen, they noticed something strange.
The DNA exhibited a “very specific, but weird, rearrangement,” she explained. The arrangement turned out to be a DNA palindrome, “opening the door to studying these elusive DNA motifs,” she said.
