This Meeting Knox'd my Socks Off!

In the beginning of August, Dwayne and I traveled to the 26^th Evergreen Phage meeting, which was held in Knoxville Tennessee for the first time. Having heard numerous stories about previous Evergreens attended by Dwayne and Tiffany, I was more than excited to experience it first-hand myself. And on top of this, it was my first scientific meeting that I have attended let alone presented at.

Once we arrived in Knoxville on Sunday we hit the ground running, dropping off our luggage and making our way to dinner where I got to meet people connected to the phage world in various contexts.

Pictured: (Left) Dinner on Sunday! This helped settle my nerves just getting to eat good food and chat about phage before the meetings started. (Right) The Knoxville Sunsphere after some rain showers. Everyone noted how much it looked like a phage.

Monday the conference really started, beginning with the topic of all thing’s phage ecology. I learned a lot about phage ecology that day, and I’m admittedly a little jealous of the people who go out on boats everyday sampling the ocean and lakes for phage.  Lunches were held in the beautiful University of Tennessee gardens where we got to explore more of the campus this meeting was hosted at.

Pictured: (left) the garden where lunch was held every day. (Right) Monday night outing to downtown Knoxville with some phage researchers from Poland. Had a great time talking not only about research but things outside of lab such as scuba diving, cars and more!

Tuesday was the big day for me as that’s when poster presentations started. After more of the talks wrapped up on Tuesday, everyone headed over to the arena where the posters were held for some wine and cheese! For about two hours straight I got to talk to all sorts of phage researchers about my project and data. What truly made this special for me was all the feedback I got from other PI’s and students and their suggestions to take this research further and make it stronger. Later that night a group of us from the meeting went out to dinner and followed it up with some line dancing and I even got to learn some salsa dance moves from Ramy Aziz.

Pictured: Candid shot of me talking about my project!

Wednesday Dwayne was the first talk in the morning introducing the topic of phage therapy. The rest of the day we heard from more phage therapy groups as well as people in industry. I was getting all sorts of ideas throughout the week on how to make certain projects work better as well as determine the gaps in my knowledge. That night was the gala which was held in a beautiful hall. There was lots of chatting and dancing, so much so that we all ended up at a silent disco at a bar in downtown Knoxville. It was there that I realized how much I had bonded with these people who three days ago I hadn’t met and now was singing along to Avril Lavigne with. Evergreen really showed me the exciting world of research and how fun it is to not only spread knowledge but just to hangout and meet people in the same field of research.

Picture: (Left) The end of Dwayne’s talk on Wednesday morning, shouting out the lab! (Right) The gala where dinner was held. It was worth the 40-minute walk in the Tennessee heat.

And to top it off, I was awarded the Graduate Student Travel Fund for the full amount of $1000. Huge thanks to The College of Graduate Studies Scholarship Team for the award as well as the Associated Students and Graduate Student Association at SDSU for the funds. Knowing that I won this award and helped fund the travel for my first conference is something I am super proud of. These awards help make travel for scientific meetings more accessible to students like me and I am excited for more conferences to come.

Thanks for reading!

-Allison