‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Biomolecular Galaxy' symposium set for May 8-9

The annual “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Biomolecular Galaxy” research symposium will be held Wednesday and Thursday (May 8-9) at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus. The symposium showcases interdisciplinary bioscience research and will have research presentations in disease pathogenesis, biophysical methods, computational biology, neuroscience and cancer research.

Graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty from across the Midwest will give posters and platform presentations. Presentations will be given throughout the symposium, and the poster session will take place from 4-6 p.m. Wednesday in the Krannert Building lobby.

Additionally, a keynote presentation will be given by Cynthia Wolberger, professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University and a leader in protein function research. Wolberger's talk, titled “Histone H2B Ubiquitination in Transcription and Chromatin Dynamics," will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday in Rawls Hall, Room 1086.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information or to register, visit the Hitchhiker’s symposium website.

The symposium is a graduate student-led event, currently organized by Brenda Gonzalez, Biological Sciences; Trevor Boram, Biochemistry; Quiyan Chen, Biological Sciences; Anna Gutridge, Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology; Matthew Pharris, Biomedical Engineering; Soutick Saha, Physics; Chelsea Theisen, Chemistry; and Professor Tamara Kinzer-Ursem, Biomedical Engineering. The symposium is now supported by Purdue’s T32-funded Biophysics Training Program (on Twitter @MbtpPurdue), which funds graduate students performing interdisciplinary biophysics research.