Category: Meetings

MWGB 2017 was a lot of fun. We had an excellent collection of talks and posters from several schools throughout the Midwest. Generous support from the Agouron Institute, School of Science, and the Department of Earth Sciences made this event possible. Special thanks goes to Lisa Pratt from IU Bloomington for her keynote address about the future of space exploration.

Lisa Pratt presenting her keynote talk about Mars.

MWGB 2017 poster session.

MWGB 2017 oral session.

Alice presenting her work from the Sao Francisco Craton.

John (left) and Greg (right) presenting their voltammetry research.

Over the past eight weeks MURI interns Amanda Evans, Amandeep Kaur, Omer Sajid, and Shruthi Garugu did research on a freeze core collected from a euxinic lake in Washington. They did an amazing amount of work, combining genetic with geochemical analyses to better characterize ecological changes that have occurred within the lake over the last 1400 years.

Today they presented their findings at the 2017 CRL Student Summer Poster Symposium. They did a fantastic job and my colleague Christine Picard and I are proud of all they accomplished. Thanks also goes to Alice Bosco and Charity Owings for mentoring and helping the students with their work in the lab.

Nice job team!

Omer and Aman.

Amanda and Shruthi.

High School student Ashley Ring did an amazing amount of work during her American Chemical Society Project Seed internship. Today, she presented her poster showcasing her analyses of Archean rocks with her mentor Alice Bosco Santos. Ashely will be a freshman at Purdue University in a few weeks. Good luck Ashley and please come visit the lab whenever you can!

Ashley Ring (right) with mentor Alice Bosco (left). 2017

Ashley and Fotis

The first conference of the Geobiology Society was excellent. We got to hike up to see part of the Burgess Shale at the Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds. The Druschel and Gilhooly research groups gave great presentations. And of course, Banff is amazing.  🙂

The Gilhooly-Druschel team.

View from the Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds

Trilobite!

Another trilobite!

Team trilobite.

Martin Kurek at his poster.

Alice Bosco Santos’ poster.

Chase Howard’s poster.

John Shukle’s poster.

My poster.

View from the conference center.

Lake pic.

Thanks to all the great speakers who presented in our technical session: BIOGEOCHEMISTRY & GEOBIOLOGY OF ANOXIC/EUXINIC SYSTEMS. Our research group did a great job of presenting their posters!

Alyssa and Martin’s posters. Photo by: Alice Bosco Santos.

Fotis presenting his poster.

The group out for well deserved beers after the meeting. Photo by: Alice Bosco Santos.

Sampling the Mahoney Lake cores at the Werne lab.

Molly and Alice are sick of looking at core.

I had a great time in Ghent at the Joint European Stable Isotopes User group Meeting. We presented our recent advancements in EA-IRMS. We also tried a lot of amazing Belgian beers. I recommend drinking L’Arogante at the Trollekelder.

http://www.jesium2016.eu/assets/jesium_2016_list_of_posters.pdf

I’m proud of our MURI team. They did an excellent job of measuring the spectral characteristics of phototrophic bacteria. Their posters at IUPUI Research Day were awesome.

Dan Orazi, Shan Khan, and James.

Getting some good sandwiches with James at Giordano Bros (Pittsburgh-style eats). James had a great poster presentation about microbial sulfur cycling in his Pacific Northwest lakes.

Another great Midwest Geobiology Symposium, this time in Chicago. The after party was awesome.

Christa Phelps, Igor Ogashawara, Nico Clercin, and James Harris (left to right) outside the Field Museum.

CDT makes a great door stop.

SUE the T. Rex at the Field Museum.

Greg Druschel and I convened the Second Annual Midwest Geobiology Symposium at IUPUI. The meeting was a big success.  We drew 90 participants from 20 schools in the Midwest.  We thank the Agouron Institute, IUPUI and OVCR for their support, and all who attended.  We’re looking forward to seeing everyone again next year in Chicago!

Fotios Kafantaris presenting at MWGB.

Lunch on the rooftop during MWGB @ IUPUI.

Lunch at MWGB @ IUPUI