Friday Funnies: Holiday Vacation Edition

Happy Holidays from C2C!
For your enjoyment, one of my favorite PHD Comics:

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Symposium

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Symposium is being held today at UCSF. The prize recognizes excellence in the field of Life Sciences. In its first year, the foundation awarded 11 prizes across the Life Science field including Cornelia Bargmann, David Botstein, Lewis C. Cantley, Hans Cleavers, Titia de Lange, Eric Lander, Napoleone Ferrara, Charles L. Sawyers, Bert Vogelstein, Robert A. Weinberg and Shinya Yamanaka. 

Today, UCSF is honoring the recipients of the 2013 prize with an all-day symposium. They event will highlight the fields of cancer, genetics, neurobiology and stem cell research. Awardees from last year will discuss recent advances in these fields with a special focus on big ideas in human health and disease. In addition, Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann will moderate a panel of the 2014 award winners. 

For those who can't make it to UCSF today or who were unable to get tickets, here is a link for the live stream:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/breakthrough-prize-in-life-sciences-awards-special-symposium



Update:

The 2014 Breakthrough Prizes were announced last night at NASA's Ames Research Center. The laureates will join last year's winners in the selection and judging of future prize winners. The 6 winners for 2014 include:

• Mahlon DeLong (Emory University)--for pioneering work in the treatment of Parkinson's Disease
• Richard Lifton (Yale University)--for identifying genetic determinants that lead to hypertension
• Michael Hall (University of Basel) --for the discovery of the enzyme TOR
• Alexander Varshavsky (CalTech)--for the study of intracellular protein degradation
• James Allison (UT Anderson Cancer Center)--for the development of immunotherapy treatments for cancer
• Robert Langer (MIT)--for the development of controlled drug-release systems and biomaterials

QBC Retreat 2013

My program and several other graduate programs in the Quantitative Biosciences Consortium (QBC) just returned from our annual retreat to Asilomar in Pacific Grove, CA. While there we heard talks from both students and professors, enjoyed humorous skits performed by the second years, and despite the chilly temperatures people braved walks on the beach during conference breaks. 

I feel as though I am sometimes in a chemistry bubble, so it was great to see the research interests of students in other programs. I myself presented at one of the poster sessions. The people who stopped by my poster had lots of positive feedback and suggestions for experiments.  I'm not sure how much time I will have to begin things before the holidays, but I'm excited to try some of these new directions come January!