Examples of Applications
The 2025ÌýSpring Travel Award application is now OPEN!
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ApplicationsÌýare due March 28, 2025 @ 11:59 PM MST
In an effort to better support conference attendance, PAC will now be funding future conference travel. Please read the rules below.
Rules
- Two awards: 1st Prize - $500, 2nd Prize - $200
- For conferences between AprilÌý1, 2025Ìý- SeptemberÌý30,Ìý2025.
- The award can be used towards conferenceÌýregistration fees.
- Submissions will be judged blindly.
- We will require proof of abstract submission/acceptance to release funds to awardees.
To apply, you will need to:
1. Provide details for the conference you are planning to attend.
2. Provide an abstract for the research you plan to present.
Provide a maximum 200 words lay abstract that is accessible to a general audience and explains the impact of the science you areÌýpresenting, either to your scientific field and/or the broader community.
3. Answer: Outside your presentation and networking, what activity (activities) will you be doing to develop your career/transferrable skills?
Provide a maximum 200 words paragraph describing how you will be using resources during the conference to develop your career transferrable skills (e.g., chairing a session, participating in a career development workshop, judging presentations, etc.). Many conferences provide opportunities for early career scientists to develop their transferable skills. The National Postdoctoral Association has listed 6 core competencies necessary for a postdoc to develop during their time postdocing that they may not receive in the work in the laboratory () that the conference provides. Finally, numerous national and international professional organizations provide resources for this development, further indicating the importance of taking advantage of these opportunities to improve your postdoctoral training.
4. Provide proof of abstract submission/acceptance.Ìý
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Congratulations to our 2024 Fall Travel Award Recipients!
First Place: Hannah Zlotnick (BioFrontiers Institute) - "Synovial fibroblasts support vascular function in both health and inflammatory disease"
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"After a knee injury, there is an increase in inflammation in the joint. This inflammation can subside, or persist, leading to painful outcomes such as joint stiffening, tissue breakdown, and eventually, a subtype of arthritis referred to as osteoarthritis. As the knee joint is a complex environment made up of many different cell and tissue types, my research aims to uncover how two of these cell populations – endothelial cells, which line our blood vessels, and synovial fibroblasts, which make up the outer lining of the joint, contribute to the progression (or resolution) of joint inflammation. Using a novel engineered blood vessel-on-a-chip model system (composed of human cells), my work uncovers the potential protective role that synovial fibroblasts may play after an acute injury, to curb endothelial inflammation and leakiness. This work has the potential to guide therapeutic design for osteoarthritis, for which there are currently no FDA-approved disease-modifying drugs on the market."
Second place: Brandon Hayes (Mechanical Engineering) - "Mechanical and Photoelastic Response of Hydrated Soft Granular Particles"
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"Flow of granular material (sand, snow, mud) happens all around us and can have devastating consequences to our lives. From sand dunes to avalanches to mudslides, the forces and stresses acting on individual grains govern how these materials flow. However, there is a key challenge: how do you measure the forces and stresses on each individual grain? One answer is photoelasticity. Photoelastic materials change their optical properties in response to applied stress. In my research, I use transparent, photoelastic particles as surrogates for naturally occurring granular particles. Unlike sand grains, when photoelastic particles push on each other, a pattern of light and dark fringes appears which reveals the exerted forces. I will be presenting an extension of this method to wet granular flows, such as mudslides. Here, photoelastic particles are immersed in fluid, such as water, to study the underlying physics of wet granular flows which are vastly different from dry granular flows. My work provides the starting point to understand the physics of a mudslide by first studying how photoelastic material properties change due to immersion in water. Once known, I can apply photoelastic particles to study how mudslides flow."
What are you presenting at the conference?
| Example 1 | Example 2 |
| Before the arrival of clinical symptoms, there are many molecular-level changes in the body that can indicate the presence of a disease. When doctors make a diagnosis, they often look for changes in the concentration of specific molecules, called biomarkers. These changes can be detected using a biosensor that recognizes the target biomarker in a patient’s blood, urine, or other bodily fluid and produces a detectable signal. However, these tests can be expensive and require special storage conditions, preventing their widespread use. I will be presenting my work on the development of portable, inexpensive diagnostic tools which use synthetic receptors, called molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), instead of natural receptors, such as antibodies, which are currently used in most diagnostic tests. MIPs have several advantages over antibodies, including lower cost of production and better environmental stability. In this work, I synthesized MIPs on the surface of nanomaterials with unique properties that enable signal production upon binding to protein biomarkers. I am currently working with lysozyme, a biomarker for several diseases including leukemia, multiple sclerosis, and Sjögren’s syndrome. The technology developed in this work could be adapted and applied for diagnosis of a variety of other diseases. | Production of small particles from the emissions of human activities in large urban areas are detrimental to human health, leading to approximately 3.3 million premature deaths per year. An important component of these particles are organic particles, which are primarily produced through rapid gas-phase chemistry; however, it has been historically difficult to predict both the production and amount of organic particles in large urban areas. This impacts the ability to reduce the emissions that lead to organic aerosols and the premature deaths. Here, I use data collected from numerous cities around the world to further explore the chemistry that controls organic particle production. I find that I can explain the production of organic particles through differences in the emissions from these urban areas with just four compounds. With this, I have started looking into the impact of reducing emissions associated with these four compounds in a chemistry model to investigate the reduction in premature deaths per year. These results will improve the atmospheric chemistry community’s understanding of organic particle sources and health impacts, and will inform policy maker’s what emissions should be reduced to improve air quality around the world. |
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