The University of Alabama in Huntsville will host the 105th Southeast Branch meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (SEB ASM) on February 21-23. The meeting will celebrate advances of microbiological research in states in the southeastern U.S.
More than 150 researchers and students from five states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina) and 26 different research institutions, will congregate in the Business Administration Building (BAB) on February 21.
The 2020 SEB ASM meeting will feature a keynote address by Dr. Rita Tamayo from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Tamayo’s presentation is sponsored by the National ASM Distinguished Lecturer Program and will take place at Chan Auditorium of the BAB Building at 5 pm on February 21. Dr. Tamayo’s work is dedicated to understanding the pathogenesis of Clostridioides difficile, or C.diff. This bacterial pathogen is infamous for causing hospital-acquired infections that kill more than 12,000 people annually in the U.S. alone. The keynote lecture is titled "Phenotypic heterogeneity impacts virulence of Clostridioides difficile".
The SEB ASM meeting is open to the public but requires registration. As this regional ASM meeting specifically focuses on providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate researchers, this year the conference offers four short workshops designed to improve understanding of modern microbiological methods and scientific communication skills: Bioinformatics Basics, Sequencing Basics, Agar Art, and Science Pitch. The workshops are provided free of charge for registered participants. In addition to the workshops and the research presentations, the SEB ASM meeting will feature a student networking event titled "Microbial Cross-Talk for Collaborating Minds" on February 21 and a Career Development Panel on February 23rd.
This meeting is sponsored by The University of Alabama in Huntsville and the Southeastern branch of ASM, and is organized by several members of the Biological Sciences Department (Drs. Tanya Sysoeva, Rogelio Cruz-Vera, Joseph Ng, and Noriko Inoguchi) together with the Alabama ASM Young Ambassador, Cheryl Sesler.
