By Evan Haney, Postdoctoral Fellow in Hancock Lab

This year, the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) General meeting teamed up with the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) to host the new ASM Microbe 2016 meeting which was held June 16-20, 2016 in Boston, MA. This conference featured over 10,000 attendees making it one of the largest gatherings of microbiologists in the world and covered topics ranging from clinical microbiology, host-microbe interactions, therapeutic development and alternatives to antibiotics.

With the help of the CBR Postdoctoral Travel Award, I had the opportunity to attend this large meeting where I presented a poster entitled “Sequence Optimization and Computational Design of Synthetic Antibiofilm Peptides”. These synthetic peptides could potentially be used to treat biofilm associated and/or chronic infections and this work was of significant interest to other attendees at ASM Microbe. I got a chance to talk with a number of experts and shared many ideas while learning about the exciting work being done in the field of antibiotic development and discovery. Other highpoints of the meeting included the keynote session which featured a Q & A with Bill Gates and a talk by Dr. Jennifer Doudna from the University of California, Berkeley discussing the efforts to understand the CRISPR-Cas9 system in bacteria.

The other highlight of my trip was getting a chance to see the great city of Boston for the first time. I got to see Harvard Square, Fenway Park and Boston Common and I rode around on the “T” like a local. I also got to try a few local beers and ate as much seafood asI could during my stay. Can’t wait to go back someday!