Three students have been invited to travel to Boston this summer to attend the American Society of Microbiology Microbe Conference, which will take place June 16 to June 20, and present on their senior project research.
Seniors Ben Weeder, Kaela Jenkins and Dao Nguyen will present on the research they have conducted over the past couple years to the conference of over one thousand participants.
Weeder and Nguyen collaborated in their research, which focused on the use of antibiotics in the animal husbandry industry, and how over-usage can result in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Jenkins worked on a separate project that looked at methane related microbes in the Columbia River Estuary located on the coast, near the border between Oregon and Washington.
The ASM Microbe Conference is the largest gathering of microbiologists in the world and the premier global event for displaying microbial sciences. The event will feature two hundred and fifty different sessions on many different types of microbiology as well as more than three thousand five hundred different posters.
Interested participants were asked to submit their abstracts on the ASM webpage. Out of those applicants, several were chosen to be speakers on their research.
The conference also features workshops, keynote speakers, poster sessions, lectures, “meet the experts” sessions and an awards session.
These three students have had to overcome a wide variety of problems while completing their research, some of these issues taking weeks in order to resolve.
Weeder said he experienced a lot of stress and frustration over his work but that, in the end, it was all worth it.
“Sometimes you’ll be stuck for like two weeks on the same thing and then all of a sudden you’ll do two weeks worth of work in three days,” Weeder said.
Weeder said resolving these issues after weeks of effort was one of the best feelings that he experienced whiling completing his work.
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