Modeled after Gordon Research Conferences, the School’s annual fall research retreat features talks and posters presented by trainees from all areas of our department.

This year’s was the largest yet, with 16 talks by senior graduate students from 16 different groups, as well as 63 poster presentations by graduate students and research scientists – a festival of exciting science in everything from computational studies of electron transfer to new catalytic transition metal chemistry to biophysical charcterization of glaucoma-causing protein aggregation to vaccine development.

Historic Banning Mills, an hour’s drive south of Georgia Tech, was once again the setting for the two-day event, and the meal- and leisure-time traditional activities were continued to excellent effect. (Don’t know what these are? Join us next year and find out!)

Thanks to the organizers (Kenyetta Johnson-Taylor, Jenae McCray, Stefan France, and the Graduate Student Forum), and to all the participants. And congratulations to the award winners:

4 top oral presentations ($300 for conference travel)

Alfie Brownless (Kamerlin Group): “Navigating SHP-1 and SHP-2: a Nautical Voyage into Protein Function” 

Joe Corstvet (Fernandez Group): “Triboelectric Nanogenerator Plasma Ionization for Mobile VOC Analysis” 

Ruoqing Jia (McShan Group): “De novo Design of Protein Antagonists of Bacterial Pathogen Type III Secretion System Needle Assembly”  

Tiffany Tang (Das Group):  “Cancer Drug Metabolism by CYP2U1 and CYP2D6 in Nanodiscs” 

2 top poster presentation ($250 for conference travel)

Monica Monge Loria (Garg Group): “Metabolomic profiling of marine bacteria mono- and co-cultures reveal natural product dysregulation and tailoring”

Devashish Sood (Finn Group): “Multistage Delivery of Molecular Adjuvants through Tunable Release Chemistry”