Student Research Presentations and Seminars

Approximately once a month, the faculty of the training program meet as part of seminar series on signal transduction and related topics in each of the participating departments in which the faculty and the research trainees have an opportunity to present their ongoing work. Each trainee has at least one opportunity and is required each year to present their research progress, new data and future directions to their fellow STTP trainees and training faculty in these seminars, which are organized within their home departments. These seminars are an important means of evaluating trainee research progress and future research directions, are attended by the trainees’ thesis committee members, and trainees receive a critique of their work following the presentation. Graduate students are encouraged by the STTP faculty to write and submit abstracts and present their research findings at national conferences and workshops, and presentations in the STTP seminar series also serves as a forum for practice sessions for national meetings. In addition to the STTP research conferences, there are weekly departmental seminar series in all of the Basic Science and Clinical Departments, where more formal presentations are given by invited outside speakers and UIC basic science and clinical faculty. These meetings provide a broad range of topics for a well-balanced view of the progress in many basic and biomedical fields, including the translational bridge between the bench and the bedside. Another important and highly successful opportunity for our STTP trainees is the annual “Chicago Signal Transduction Symposium (CSTS), a Chicago-wide annual event, supported in part by our STTP and free to all graduate students. This symposium invites 8 of the top scientists in the field each year to present their work in a series of seminars. A two hour social period concomitant with poster presentations from laboratories of the many universities in Chicago (University of Illinois, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Loyola University etc.) and the surrounding area (we routinely have visitors from Washington University, St. Louis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Notre Dame, Purdue University, and the University of Michigan) provides our STTP trainees and other GEMS students with another focused opportunity to meet scientists in the Greater Chicago area with common interests in signal transduction, to present their current work in poster format, and to seek postdoctoral opportunities in signal transduction laboratories. A number of our current STTP faculty are members of the CSTS organizing committee including Drs. Lester Lau, Tohru Kozasa, Terry Untermann, Mark Rasenick, Tatyana Voyno-Yasenetskaya, and Richard Ye.

 

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