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.
“The Frederick Postbac Poster Day was a great success, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Postbac Committee in organizing the event and the outstanding research conducted by our Frederick postbacs,” said Jen Mariano, a special volunteer in the Office of Training and Education who served as a fellows liaison before her recent retirement.
Postbacs shared their research findings across two oral presentation sessions and a poster session. NCI Frederick staff scientists judged the oral presentations, while NCI Frederick postdocs judged the poster session. Top scores won “best poster” and “best oral presentation.”
A Low-Pressure Training Opportunity
“It’s great practice. As other people are judging your poster, and other people are stopping by and looking at your poster, they can offer a lot of really helpful feedback for your project itself and give you new ideas,” said Krushnangi Das, a first-year postbac in the Clinical Retrovirology Section of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (HIV DRP), who attended the event.
Aside from gaining valuable feedback on their research, postbacs could practice sharing their work, a first-time experience in some cases. For postbacs, these fellowships are only the beginning of a career in science, in which oral and poster presentations are a huge part of sharing information, gaining collaborators, and securing funding for research.
“The whole point of the postbac experience is it’s training for science, and a big part of that is communication. We just want people to feel more confident,” said Thomas Abney-Lidahl, a member of the Frederick Postbac Committee and postbac in the HIV DRP.
Attendees took notes during presentations, and hands shot up with questions after each presenter concluded. Though the moderators had prepared questions in case of a reserved audience, they didn’t need to use them.
With plenty of snacks to fuel everyone, the poster session was lively as well, with participants stopping and mingling at each poster throughout the hour.
The Frederick Postbac Committee scheduled the event for late March to give postbacs enough time in their fellowships to accrue enough data to present. The timing also avoids later spring conferences and other, bigger presentation opportunities in which many will also present. Participating in the event in Frederick meant an opportunity to practice at a familiar campus with peers and senior colleagues they already know before presenting their work to wider audiences.
Building Community and Enthusiasm in Science
Getting feedback from others and learning what others are working on has an added benefit: “It helps maintain that curiosity that you should keep when you’re in science,” said Das, who is also a member of the Frederick Postbac Committee.
The conversations created an excited buzz and, on a big campus where it can be hard to cross paths, gave postbacs an opportunity find camaraderie with others outside their labs. The event included a lunch break and concluded with an ice cream social to create more time for community-building.
“It’s not an easy time to be training in science, but the Postbac Poster Day really showed there’s still a lot of excitement and passion for us and for our research,” said Abney-Lidahl.
The Frederick Postbac Committee is already planning to host the event again next year and hopes even more postbacs will attend and use the opportunity to practice presenting and expand their community.
“This is exactly why you should [attend]: You get to talk to people who are excited about science as well, and that’s how you start to feel that community that is strong,” said Abney-Lidahl.
The Committee, who meets weekly, coordinates scientific and social events on the Frederick campus for NCI Frederick postbacs to help build that strong community.
The Frederick Postbac Poster Day award winners are listed below:
Best Poster: Alana Thomas, HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (Kearney Lab)
Best Oral Presentation, Session 1: Thomas Abney-Lidahl, HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (Freed Lab)
Best Oral Presentation, Session 2: Olga Drozdovitch, Molecular Targets Program (Aregger Lab)
To get involved with the Frederick Postbac Committee, email Brandi Carofino at brandi.carofino@nih.gov or Allison Kende at allison.kende@nih.gov.
Karolina Wilk is a technical editor in SPGM, where she writes for NCI Frederick and Frederick National Laboratory’s news outlets and edits scientific manuscripts, corporate documentation, and other writing. SPGM is the creative services department and hub for editing, illustration, graphic design, formatting, and multimedia training and support.
