More than 100 graduate students, postdocs, and faculty members from more than ten departments attended the annual National Institutes of Health Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant (CBITG) Symposium in May.
The symposium
was planned and hosted by current CBITG trainees, including department of medicinal chemistry students Sara
Coulup (Georg lab) and Carter Eiden (Aldrich lab).
A variety of speakers from fields
that bridge chemistry and biology research presented a range of topics. Kim Maize,
grad student in the Finzel lab, presented "Ligand-Induced Structural Changes in Anthrax Lethal Factor." In addition, the symposium featured a poster session, where the department was well-represented by graduate students Joe Buonomo and Carter Eiden (Aldrich lab), Denise Casemore (Xing lab),
Sara Coulup, David Huang, and Andi Wisniewski (Georg lab), Arnie Groehler (Tretyakova lab), Elbek Kurbanov (Amin lab), Cody Lensing (Haskell-Luevano lab), Aniekan Okon (Wagner lab), and Maggie Olson and John Widen (Harki lab).
Mark Distefano, department of chemistry professor and medicinal chemistry graduate faculty member, is director of CBITG. The
mission of the training grant is to provide students with interdisciplinary
training so that they can tackle complex research problems involving a
combination of chemical and biological methods.