Adam Kibiloski shares highlights of attending the 30th Midwest Microbial Pathogenesis Conference
Adam Kibiloski is a third-year doctoral candidate in MGI Professor Rob Abramovitch’s lab. He attended this summer’s Midwest Microbial Pathogenesis Conference and provided the following first-hand account.
This past September, my fellow labmates and I attended the 30th annual Midwest Microbial Pathogenesis Conference, or MMPC, at Indiana University in Bloomington. This conference aims to bring together investigators “to present and discuss recent advances in the field of microbial pathogenesis.” It is geared towards bolstering early-career scientists, and the organizers emphasize including underrepresented scientists at all levels in the field of microbiology.
There were a wide variety of talks on subjects from phage infection of pathogenic microbes to bacterial effectors in Yersinia pestis – the latter of which was delivered by keynote speaker Kim Orth. Dr. Orth is the Earl A. Forsythe Chair in Biomedical Science and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
The lab of MGI Professor Chris Waters was well-represented at MMPC. Nkrumah Grant, a former post-doctoral researcher from the lab, gave a talk on the research he is conducting in his new lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he is now a faculty member. Additionally, Jasper Gomez, a current doctoral student in the lab, was one of a select few graduate students who was given the opportunity to deliver an oral presentation. Jasper gave a talk entitled “T2: A ‘tail’ of two phases.”
I presented a poster on my dissertation research which focuses on phosphate metabolically restricting growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis at acidic pH. I received many insightful comments that will aid me in developing my research, including from other researchers studying phosphate transport as well as from prominent M. tuberculosis researchers Patricia Champion of Notre Dame and Anna Tischler of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. It was a fantastic opportunity to grow my professional network and interact with talented scientists.
The conference also provided a very helpful opportunity to discuss career options with a career panel of scientists in a range of fields. The fields included: industry, government, academia, and academic advising. This gave students attending the conference the chance to explore career paths that diverted from academia.
Altogether, MMPC was a very successful conference. I enjoyed exploring Bloomington as well as the wide breadth of science being presented. I look forward to attending the 31st annual MMPC at Loyola University in Chicago next fall.
