Six Postdoctoral Researchers Earn Honors At Texas A&M Symposium

Six postdoctoral researchers received awards for flash-talk and poster presentations at Texas A&M University’s Fourth Annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium, held in celebration of National Postdoc Appreciation Week.

The Texas A&M Postdoctoral Association, the Health Science Center Postdoctoral Association and the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences Postdoctoral Association worked together to organize the first virtual edition of the symposium.

The Sept. 23 symposium featured more than 40 postdoctoral participants presenting their research to an audience of 162 fellow postdocs, faculty members and staff from 17 colleges and schools.

Awards were given in two categories to the following postdoctoral research associates:

• Outstanding Flash-Talk Presentations
  First place: Nicola Oosthuizen, Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
  Second place: Don Hood, Department of Geology and Geophysics, College of Geosciences
  Third place: Jolene Ramsey, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
• Outstanding Poster Presentations
  First place: Rebecca Legere, Biomedical Sciences Program, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
  Second place: Marie Southerland, Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology, College of Medicine
  Third place: Meichen Wang, Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences

“When we started planning for this symposium in the early spring, we could not have anticipated how transitioning to an online format could have turned out so well,” said Andreea Trache, faculty advisor for the Texas A&M Postdoctoral Association and associate professor, College of Medicine. “We are very pleased with the broad participation and high number of attendees from across Texas A&M campuses. Moreover, the quality of the presentations, both for flash talks and poster presentations, reflected the complexity of the research performed by Texas A&M postdocs and their professionalism.”

Speakers for the symposium included Vice President for Research Mark A. Barteau; Interim Dean Amy Waer, College of Medicine; Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies Robert Burghardt, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences; and keynote speaker Nancy Ryan Gray, president and chief executive officer of Gordon Research Conferences.

Members of the postdoctoral executive committees organized and coordinated the symposium. The Division of Research and the postdoctoral offices from the College of Medicine and College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences provided administrative support.

About the Texas A&M Postdoctoral Association: The Texas A&M Postdoctoral Association fosters a sense of community among postdoctoral scholars, advocates and serves as a representative voice of postdoctoral scholars, and strives to improve the quality of the postdoctoral experience at Texas A&M. For more information about the Texas A&M PDA and how to become involved, visit the Division of Research website or contact pda@tamu.edu. To receive information about postdoc opportunities and events, join the postdoc listserv by emailing Shannon Eyre, seyre@tamu.edu.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including in science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $952 million in fiscal year 2019. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the most recent National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development survey based on expenditures of more than $922 million in fiscal year 2018. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental, and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation, and world. research.tamu.edu