We’re heading to ABRF 2012!

In 10 days, my colleagues and I will pack our bags and head off to Orlando, Florida for the annual meeting of the Association for Biomolecular Resources Facilities (ABRF).   Believing, as we do, that our mission and vision aligns well with the goals of core facilities around the world, we’re excited about the opportunity to share our progress with the broader ABRF community.  In addition to our booth presence (#504), we will be participating in one of the Lunch & Demo Stage Presentations, and we are sponsoring this quarter’s ABRF newsletter, Communications, which will feature an article about Science Exchange in the section titled “Solutions.”

As we started looking through the program and thinking about what we hope to get from the meeting, we realized that the conference is a unique mix of experts with very diverse viewpoints on the practice of science in the 21st century.  We thought it would be informative – and fun! – to ask some of them to share their perspectives, insights and hopes for this year’s meeting on our blog.

Thus, we are pleased to introduce a series of guest blogs from attendees of this year’s ABRF conference that will be posted over the next two weeks.

• Our first guest blogger is a fellow New Zealander, Carl Yeoman, now a postdoc at the Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who will tell us a little about the research he will be presenting on wild primates.
• Two of our guest bloggers represent different layers of responsibility for core facility technology, management and operations in the United States: Stephen Byers is Associate Director for Shared Resources at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center (and also an advisor for Science Exchange); Susanna Perkins is Director of Research Cores & Operations at University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS).
• In addition, Taslimarif Saiyed, who will travel several thousand miles from India to attend ABRF, will tell us about the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms of India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR), where he is Director and COO.
• And finally, Alex Hodgson, Managing Director of 1DegreeBio, will give us her thoughts on the need for better solutions to antibody sourcing.

If you are attending ABRF 2012, we hope you’ll find this series of posts food for thought and a tantalizing look ahead at your upcoming conference experience.  (And, of course, we’d love for you to stop by our booth to say hello.)  If not, perhaps you’ll make a mental note to attend next year!

-Elizabeth

About the author

Elizabeth Iorns is Co-Founder & CEO of Science Exchange. Elizabeth conceived the idea for Science Exchange while an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami and as CEO she drives the company’s vision, strategy and growth. She is passionate about creating a new way to foster scientific collaboration that will break down existing silos, democratize access to scientific expertise and accelerate the speed of scientific discovery. Elizabeth has a B.S. in Biomedical Science from the University of Auckland, a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, and conducted postdoctoral research in Cancer Biology from the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine where her research focused on identifying mechanisms of breast cancer development and progression.