RECOMB, aka my 1 year UCSD reunion!

Posted 05:05 PM, April 28, 2007, by saerni

Graduate school has some weird things, which I'm sure I have mentioned a few times. Retreats are strange enough, basically a few days where you leave, during the work-week, and do nothing but talk about science, meet more scientists, and miss work and class with people in your departments. Conferences are the same thing, except on an international scale!! People miss work from all over the world, in order to talk science, show results, and network.

RECOMB was my first time at the conference, although I had a paper in it last year with Eleazar Eskin about the history of the conference, neither one of us was able to attend the event in VENICE, ITALY!! (That was a major loss)!!! This year I was not presenting anything, but I was expected to go, and it was in Oakland, so really, how could I not?! I carpooled with Tom, Konrad (the visiting scholar), Marc and Andreas.

There were TONS of people there from UCSD. Ben Raphael, my undergraduate postdoc adviser, Pavel Pevzner and Vineet Bafna as well as a ton of students, including Erik Corona, who will be joining our program next year (yeay) was there to present! It was a great talk! Also other people from Eleazar's lab. It did feel a bit like a reunion. Also, Ali Bashir was there, one of the most inspirational TAs I've had! He is a Berkeley graduate, so he has to hate Stanford, and even made a comment about how I said something like someone from Stanford! I resent that!!! He had some pointer about grad school, how it is full of ups and downs, and the first year vacillates significantly more than other years. I like that, it's a positive comment.

Eleazar has moved to UCLA, which is pretty cool! He has such a great lab and such great work, I emailed my former summer program, SoCalBSI about him being a potential adviser. Unfortunately he will not be able to coordinate a talk this summer, but I definitely think he is just the perfect example of a professor who needs to be involved in this program! Assuming he has time! He mentioned I should come talk to his group!! I'm so honored, but also extremely nervous. I am down there a lot, so we'll see what I can work out (once I have more results and work). Nuno Bandeira, from UCSD as well, spoke to the program last summer, so this seems ideal!

There were some great keynotes as well. My favorite by far was Jenny Graves from Australia! George and I were laughing throughout the talk, getting strange looks. But the last slide (shown left) was proof that everyone else simply had no sense of humor, and we caught on sooner! She is really great. She showed how Y-chromosomes are shrinking, and that eventually the human Y will disappear, and pointed out that males in her audience are usually quite offended by this (and laughing said she doesn't understand why). She also had interesting theories on speciation, how these changes make the males unable to mate with certain females, so two species develop!!! It was AMAZING!

There were also a couple poster sessions. I have to give out my awards.

Second place goes to the following poster. I know it's hard to see, not so much because George is reading it, but mostly, because it's a small picture of it (in all fairness, it was also redirecting us to its new location).

The winner, with no real excuse, except maybe a lost poster, is the following:

In all fairness, this were both amazing posters, particularly the winner which I think attracted more people because it looked like that, and the author had to explain it! I was very impressed overall! You really do learn a huge amount at these conferences. I told Marina, I think if Russ had a choice of sending us to a conference, or having is sit in class, hands down the conferences win. I learned way more cutting-edge science at this conference than in any class!!

On Wednesday night, we went up to LBL and got the most amazing view of the bay, while munching on dinner! There were some fun toys we got to play around with! Later we went to a pub back around Oakland with students. Sean O'Rourke and Erik from Eleazar's lab joined us, they were both celebrating successful presentations. I also met new people, Barrett Abel from UC Davis, and I even bumped into a student from USC I met during interviews (she is a student there)! It's pretty crazy!!!

Ryan also buzzed his head, after much coaxing! I had him buzz it when we first got together, I think it looks really great! He let it grow long again, and he does have amazing hair, but he is not necessarily willing to put the full effort into keeping it long. I even got him an appointment once with my stylist Guy. It looks amazing...as always!