During the conference, especially during my poster session, I had the chance to talk to all kinds of people and learn from them by introducing each other’s research projects. The most exciting part was when I talked to a person working on genes related to cancer. With his profound knowledge on GSTM genes, we had a long discussion on how this unique genotype takes place in certain people’s genomes and how it may influence their ability to resist the development of cancer. Since my study was mostly focused on lipid metabolism, this is something I have never thought about. I also got the chance to talk to a graduate student studying binding partners of myosin 19, because she has found something that is closely related to my thesis project.

Besides talking to scientists, I also visited companies and stores and have gained a lot of gifts. Besides free T-shirts, coloring books, calendars, notebooks, we also got free DNA ladders, DNA polymerase and free antibodies! I also found a software named BioRender, which can be very useful for making figures for presentation and papers. I am sure those things will greatly aid for my thesis project, which is one of the most important tasks I need to accomplish next semester. I greatly appreciate the chance to attend this conference, and wish to have the chance to go there more often in the foreseeable future. Thanks to our lovely college, the SHIP grant, and Dr. Walsh, and everyone who made this possible.

ASCB/EMBO is the first conference I have ever attended in my life. According to Dr. Walsh, ASCB held in San Diego are usually the best ones because of its fine weather and convenient transportation downtown. This is very true. I was very much amazed when I realized that the convention center is less than a mile away from our hotel. With the ubiquitous scooters available for rent on the street, I could easily get to the conference within 2 minutes. This enabled me to maximumly enjoy the conference and could easily get back to the hotel as needed.

Despite the fact that I have inadequate knowledge or expertise on most of the topics covered in this conference, I have learned a lot from the talks I went to and from talking to people from all over the world. The most interesting talk I went to was trying to explain why cytoskeleton structures like microtubules and actins would organize in certain ways to ensure efficient distribution of molecules and organelles. This is when I realized how important it is to using math models sometimes in biology to help solve complicated problems. I have also went to talks about making artificial cells and generating complex organoids using human induced pluripotent stem cells. Those things provide great insights into how cell biology and the whole field of biomedical science would become in the future, and encouraged me to become part of it.