More than 1,000 students, researchers and academics will converge at MU’s annual Life Sciences Week, which began Monday.
The event started in 1985 as Molecular Biology Week and became Life Sciences Week in 2003 to encourage collaboration among students, faculty and staff from the different sciences, said Ginny Booker, marketing and communications manager of the Life Sciences Center.
“There are many conferences that take place at MU focused on various science disciplines, but this is the only one that involves everything from human and animal health, agriculture and food, the environment, social and behavioral sciences, bioengineering and more,” she said.
Booker said one of the event’s highlights is the research poster session, which showcases more than 300 projects from MU researchers. Topics range from social and behavioral sciences to cellular biology, according to the [Life Sciences Week website](http://lifesciencesweek.missouri.edu/).
Projects by MU undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students were eligible to enter a research contest to earn mini-grants to further their research.
Postdoctoral student Yi Mou, who won first place in the social and behavioral sciences and education category in 2013, said participating in Life Sciences Week allowed him to obtain feedback from researchers in other areas, which he incorporated into his work.
“To get the award was not my purpose,” Mou said. “The most important activity is that I really like to share my work and get their comments and suggestions.”
Mou’s research aims to understand whether infants can match sound durations to analogous amounts on images they see. In his experiments, Mou plays a sound that represents a fraction of a duration — half a second, for instance — and observes whether infants stare longer at an image that represents the same numerical fraction, or an image that represents another fraction.
His research, Mou said, borrows from neurology and the social sciences.
“You can share your work with people and learn something new from people, not just in your area but in other areas,” Mou said.
In addition to the poster session, the 2014 edition of Life Sciences Week includes a reception to honor members of the former Molecular Microbiology Program.
This years’ event also features seminars by internationally renowned scientists, such as Sabeeha Merchant, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and distinguished professor of biochemistry in the Molecular Biology Institute at the University of California. Merchant was honored at the reception Monday, according to the Life Sciences Week website.
Robert Gallo, who in 1980 co-identified HIV as the cause of AIDS, is also speaking at the event. Gallo is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Other events include tours of MU research facilities, such as the MU Cytology Core, a vendor show with scientific supplies and equipment, and a career fair for future scientists and researchers.
Life Sciences Week is free and open to the public. Most participants are students, faculty and staff involved in the sciences at MU, but Booker encourages all members of the community to attend.
Matt McCune, a postdoctoral student in biophysics who won first place in the bioengineering and informatics category in 2013, said posters can be highly technical, but researchers enjoy sharing their projects with the general public.
McCune creates theoretical models and runs computer simulations to help bioengineers predict the results of experiments with 3-D printing to potentially build replacement organs with a person’s own cells.
“I love talking about what I do even to preschool kids,” McCune said. “It’s not dumbing it down, although some people like to say that. You can just have a conversation, and it’s a good challenge for the presenter to be able to present it to someone who’s not a trained scientist.”
