Society for Invertebrate Pathology 2014

Usually when I meet someone new and they ask me about my work, I try to respond with the most basic answer I can - "I am a biologist. I study fungi that kill insects. Farmers can use it as a bio-pesticide". This is usually met with an insincere "that's interesting" and change of conversation. This, among many, is one reason I look forward to the annual Society for Invertebrate Pathology (SIP) meeting: it is one of the few places where I can tell a new acquaintance: "I am looking at how several species of the entomopathoginic fungus Metarhizium interacts when applied concurrently with the mycoparasitic fungus Clonostachys rosea on wheat seeds to mitigate two separate pests - root herbivores and the fungal-plant pathogen Fusarium culmorum.”  And instead of a blank stare they’ll answer with something like “do you know if both the biocotrol fungi are endophytic in your system?” 

I think Shannon always feels bad that I have to go and sit in meetings all day, listening to scientific talks – but really I find associating and interacting with people from all over the world who are doing similar research as me to be very refreshing. I always finish the week exhausted but eager to get back to work.

SIP flag

This was my forth SIP meeting so I had a pretty good idea what to expect.  First off, in order to justify it as a work event and not just a social gathering, nearly everyone that attends presents something they are working on, either as a scientific poster (think science fair for grownups) or a 15 minute oral presentation.  

Martina Flagiarda, a master student I worked with. This is her poster that I helped with.

A summary of what you are going to present has to be submitted usually 4 months in advance.  Last March, as we were preparing our abstracts, my professor suggested I apply for one of the student travel awards – an award given to a few students with the best applications.  I was fortunate enough to be selected as the winner for the fungal division. I was excited to have received the award but also a bit nervous because I had based my application on a preliminary study and was hoping that I could finish the experiment in the few months before the meeting. This ended up being more of a challenge than I had expected, as my first attempt failed completely and I was left with no results and only 6 weeks left. Luckily, with some careful planning and a team of hired students, I was able to finish with 10 days to spare.

I had decided to give an oral presentation this year.  I have had a lot of opportunities to stand in front of groups and talk, so usually I approach presentations with the confidence that as long as I know my story and I have the PowerPoint slides, I’ll find the words when I am up there.  However, as I prepared for this talk I realized that this approach was probably not going to work this time. First of all, the system I was using for my experiments was complicated with lots of different organisms being added together, whenever I had tried to talk about it to people previously they had gotten lost very quickly; secondly, since in the next 6 or so months I am going to need a job, I really wanted to stand out at this conference.

The first thing I decided was that I need to have very sharp PowerPoint slides that clearly showed was I was doing with very few words.  I am not very artistic, but to accomplish this I downloaded a trial version of adobe illustrator and started watching YouTube videos every night to figure out how to use it.  I know a lot of people probably could have created a flash animation that demonstrated the whole process I used in the same amount of time I spent on my simple illustrations, but I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

One of the images I used to explain what interaction I was interested in.

The next thing I did was to put a lot more effort in to the actual presentation. I watched several YouTube videos on how to give good presentations (YouTube is so great). I scripted most of what I wanted to say, with exactly the wording I wanted to use – I had a hard time coming up with a good intro and changed it several times. And then I practiced: by myself, in front of my colleagues, I even enlisted my wife and kids – the kids ended up being more interested in the laser pointer and how the cat reacted to it, but you take what you can get.  I was surprised how much this all helped, I always thought that if I practiced and memorized my lines it would make me sound artificial, but actually I think it helped me to sound more authentic.  

The conference started on Sunday night. Unfortunately, my talk was not until Wednesday, so I spent most of the meeting anxious to get it over with.  Despite my nervousness, I had a great time. I have gotten to know a lot of people from all over the world and this is one of the few places that I actually get to see them.

Everton and Alessandra - Brazilian friends I worked with in Logan

There were also a lot of really great sessions. I was particularly interested in several of the talks from industry representatives discussing the growth and future of the biocontrol industry – which is the side of the research that has always drawn my fascination.  From the Danish group I work with we had 10 participants attend the meeting, several of us gave talks or presented posters. Overall, as a group we all did very well representing Denmark. Which was a good thing since the President of the society is from our lab.

Jørgen Eilenberg just finished his term as president of SIP

Each year at the conference, on Tuesday afternoon, we have an excursion to some local attraction followed by a BBQ. This year’s excursion was really awesome. We took a 3 hour boat ride up the Rhine River, which is just amazing – every time the river bends there is another castle ruin – and then we toured an old castle and had the BBQ in the castle courtyard.  It was definitely a once in a life time experience.

Several of us from the danish group. photo by Erin Morris

With having spent several days prior to the meeting touring Germany and because of all that is crammed into each day during the conference I never got the chance to look at my presentation after leaving Denmark.  This added to my nervousness as I stood to give my talk but the presentation ended up going really well and I received a lot of good questions, complements and feedback afterwards – really I was just glad to be done with it.

Thursday is sort of a winding up day with some business meetings and down time, this gave me a chance to see my family while they were awake (most nights I got back to the hotel pretty late). Then Thursday evening we had a more formal banquet followed by a dance – I know its hard (and probably a bit humorous) to imagine 400 scientists on a dance floor but it happens.  

During the conference all the student presentations are judged and at the banquet, awards are given to the top three oral and poster presenters.  There were about 60 student participants so I was quite surprised when I was awarded the first place oral presentation prize (tied with another student).

Award presentation. Photo by Thomas Guthmann www.thomasguthmanne.de

Overall it was a really great conference. I got to talk with a lot of old friends and I met a lot of new ones.  While nobody offered me a job after I graduate, I think I got as much exposure as I could hope for. I came away with a lot of new ideas, appreciation for the work others are doing and a renewed confidence that my research is interesting and important to at least a few people around the world.