Veterinary college symposium showcases graduate students’ research, makes collaboration connections
“This is where the magic happens.”
That’s how Margie Lee, associate dean for research and graduate studies at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, described the college’s annual research symposium on March 18 at The Inn at Virginia Tech, titled Forging ahead: Pathways Toward Novel Clinical Approaches.
"This is where students and faculty find out what their colleagues are doing," Lee said. "This is where the collaborations happen that wouldn’t happen before. You've got the environmental person talking to the dog cancer person with the epidemiologist standing in the corner saying, 'Wait, what did you say? Oh, did you know about this part? Well, we should do that.' And then you’ll have a bacteriologist coming through who says, ‘Yeah, but you guys didn’t really look at what the microbiome does.'"
More than 60 graduate students from the veterinary college and its research and public health programs created posters explaining their research with some of them chosen to give either a full-length or four-minute flash talk about their research to their peers and faculty mentors.
“This is a great opportunity for the students to feature their research and give them practice presenting, and it allows faculty members to see what other labs are doing,” said Irving Coy Allen, professor of inflammatory diseases in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathology and an organizer of the symposium.
Students participating are at different stages of their research, some having already given presentations outside the college, while others getting a first opportunity to do something that will become frequent in many of their careers.
“I actually did not at the college level have this kind of opportunity,” Allen said. “So my first talk was in front of an international conference in front of about 1,000 people, and I bombed. This would have been an excellent idea for me.”
The presented research is also at various stages in the publication process.
“All of the research we hope will eventually be published, but that was not a requirement,” Allen said. “This represents research from all of our second-year and above graduate students, and our hope is all of it will be published. It will certainly be part of their dissertations.”
The poster presentations are a little like “our high school science projects,” Allen said, with graduate students printing large laminated sheets explaining their research.
“This constitutes about a year and a half of my life,” said graduate student Dylan Easley, pointing at his poster, “Treatment Duration and Load Magnitude Differentially Affect Biomechanical Properties in a Preclinical Model of Achilles Tendinopathy.”
The flash talks are also quite challenging, as graduate students have to crunch years of research into a four-minute talk.
“I get really excited about all that I have going on,” said Brie Trusiano, clinical pathology resident, standing with her poster on eosinophilopoiesis. “The biggest challenge is synthesizing information in a way that people in other walks of life can make sense of it.”
Research presented covered the gamut from climate change to infectious diseases to large animal medicine. A half-dozen faculty, including the veterinary college dean, Dan Givens, gave talks that often combined elements of their research with discussion of their often serpentine paths into their current career positions.
Two keynote speakers – John Rossmeisl, the Dr. and Mrs. Dorsey Taylor Mahin Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Yanjin Zhang, associate professor of virus-cell interactions, viral pathogenesis, and vaccine development at the veterinary college’s University of Maryland site – dug deep into their research.
“I really like seeing the diversity of research,” said Allen. “The diversity, while it’s fantastic, it can be a challenge as well, arranging and organizing all the presentations, certainly planning around everyone’s busy schedules” Allen said. “But it’s great we can get all of our departments together to present their work.”
The symposium has been held at the veterinary college in the past, but organizers decided to move it to The Inn at Virginia Tech this year.
“We wanted this to feel more like a real symposium,” Allen said. “I think we felt that having it at the college, it would still feel like we’re going to class everyday, it’s our normal routine. Having at the inn gave us an excuse to dress up nice today, to have some meals together. I think it fosters more of a collaborative atmosphere, here at the inn.”
And that, after all, is the goal, to allow researchers into human, animal, and environmental health under the veterinary college umbrella to cross-pollinate and inspire one another’s studies.
“This is what One Health really looks like,” Lee said.
