Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Conference Report: NIH "Human Microbiome Science: Vision for the Future" conference, Bethesda MD

I got back from this conference a couple a little while ago. I had the opportunity to present a poster of some of my work, and a chance to hear from some of the biggest names in the field of microbiome research. You should be able to watch individual talks as soon as they put them up here.

The idea behind this conference was to get feedback from scientists in the area about what the current state of our knowledge is, and to hear about what challenges and difficulties lie in the way of further progress. It was an impressive effort from the NIH people to figure out why they should be funding microbiome research and where the funding would do the most good. With the first phase of the Human Microbiome Project drawing to a close, it was a good chance to stop and organize and plan out what comes next.

I learned a lot about how NIH funding works, what the sub-institutes are, and what they fund. I got to meet a program officer and hear a talk from NIH Director Francis Collins, he of the Human Genome Project fame. I also got to hear talks from such luminaries as Rob Knight, Curtis Huttenhower (Nice guy!), Peter Turnbaugh, Ruth Ley, and Ed Yong (one of the best Twitter follows I ever made). My favorite talk was probably by Maria Gloria Dominguez Bello, who talked about the microbiomes of uncontacted indigenous tribes in Venezuela.

This was also my first time in Washington D.C.. I took the metro downtown one night to have dinner with my PhD advisor and his old PhD advisor (my grand-advisor?), Gary Dunny. Meeting him was a cool opportunity. I liked the atmosphere of the part of D.C. we went to.

I really think there is a bright future ahead in microbiome research, with discoveries just being made about the interactions of the microbiome with hormone regulation, autism development, new probiotics, immune system regulation and autoimmune disease, fecal transplants (So relatively unstudied! So exciting!), and obesity.

And who's to say scientists don't have a sense of humor! My advisor got a chuckle using this sign to talk about correlation vs. causation.
What order these go in makes for very different stories!
Another speaker used this video to talk about the seeking NIH funding in the current funding climate and overcoming challenges along the way. (The cheese is the funding, the grant applicant is the mouse)



I'll be speaking at two conferences between now and October, so this is not the end of conference season for me. It's nice to be able to do conferences at this stage of my PhD and talk about my data.