Schedule
This event is over
8:00 am Check in | Coat Check Booth
8:00 AM Breakfast | Ballroom A/B
9:00 AM Introductory remarks | Ballroom C
9:15 AM Keynote address | Ballroom C
Professional networking: they're just a friend you haven't met yet
Charles Allen Thomas Professor of Chemistry at Washington University at St. Louis
10:15 AM Coffee break | Ballroom A/B
10:30 AM Career Panel | Ballroom C
The career panel is intended to showcase the breadth of careers that PhDs and postdocs choose to pursue and give graduate students and postdocs an opportunity to learn from the career paths of established professionals. To read about our panelists in more detail, please visit the Speakers & Guests page.
Process Engineer | Piramal Pharma Solutions
Head of Bioinformatics | Trudiagnostic
Senior Commercialization Manager | University of Kentucky
Director of Foundation & Corporate Philanthropy | University of Kentucky
Senior Research Scientist | Director of Assisted Reproduction Sciences & Laboratory Animal Research | ParaTechs Corporation
12:00 PM Lunch | Ballroom A/B
12:30 PM Global Impact Poster Competition | Ballroom A/B
The Global Impact Poster Session is intended to highlight the broader impact of postdoc research or scholarly work at the University of Kentucky. This poster session aims to showcase the importance of postdocs' findings for people, communities, cultures and countries all over the world and how it can help tackle problems we all face as a global community.
Winners will be selected by audience rating.
Prizes: $200 for 1st place, $150 for 2nd place, $100 for 3rd place, $50 for 4th place
1:30 PM Postdoc Talk Competition | Ballroom C
The Postdoc Talk Competition is an opportunity for postdocs to showcase and present their research or scholarly work to a scientifically diverse and educated audience in 10 minutes.
Winners will be selected by a panel of faculty judges based on speaker's proficiency in communication, enthusiasm, language, visuals, and articulation of research. For more details see the scoring rubric here: Postdoc Talk Competition Scoring Rubric
Prizes: $300 for 1st place, $200 for 2nd place
Understanding of Risk Factors in the Process of Seeking Help for Intimate Partner Violence: A Mixed Method Study
“Everyone eats, so everyone poops!”: When Wastewater is the Path to More Equitable Healthcare and Predicting the Next Pandemic
Giant lizards shed light into the origins of biodiversity
Targeting the opioid epidemic: Developing an Improved Rescue Agent
Defining Worship Spaces: Understanding the Patterns of Pre-Colonial Church Architecture of Thomas Christians of South India
See abstracts below.
2:30 PM Coffee break | Ballroom A/B
2:45 PM What you wish your faculty/postdoc knew | Ballroom C
In an effort to understand postdoc-faculty relationship dynamics, a panel of both faculty and postdocs will discuss comments submitted by UK faculty to a survey entitled What you wish your postdoc/s knew about you, and by UK postdocs to a survey entitled What you wish your faculty/PI knew about you. To read about our panelists in more detail, please visit the Speakers & Guests page.
Associate Professor of Physiology | College of Medicine | University of Kentucky
Postdoctoral Scholar | College of Pharmacy | University of Kentucky
Postdoctoral Scholar | Gluck Equine Research Center | University of Kentucky
Marion Pearsall Professor of Behavioral Science | College of Medicine | University of Kentucky
3:45 PM Coffee break | Ballroom A/B
4:00 PM Nurturing Crazy Ideas | Ballroom C
In the spirit of this year's SOPS book club which read Loonshots: How to Nurture Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Disease, and Transform Industries, by Safi Bahcall, we invited a panel of knowledge experts to share their perspective on how to in fact nurture crazy ideas and foster collaboration in innovative research. To read about our panelists in more details, please visit the Speakers & Guests page.
Director | Discovery Chemistry and Research Technology | Eli Lilly & Company
Professor in Plant Pathology | College of Agriculture, Food and Environment | University of Kentucky
Director | Office of Technology Commercialization | University of Kentucky
5:00 PM Closing Remarks | Ballroom C
2022 Society of Postdoctoral Scholars Outstanding Service Award Ceremony
Presented to Nancy Schoenberg, Marion Pearsall Professor of Behavioral Science (check out the news here!)
Postdoc Talk Competition winners announced
Global Impact Poster Session winners announced
5:15 PM Reception | Ballroom A/B
Postdoc Talk Competition abstracts
Understanding of Risk Factors in the Process of Seeking Help for Intimate Partner Violence: A Mixed Method Study
Introduction: About one in four women experience sexual and physical intimate partner violence (IPV), and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime in the United States. Individual, relational, community, and societal level factors influence the help-seeking process for IPV in which women across different cultural and demographic backgrounds engage. To develop effective IPV prevention programs, we need to understand the complexity of factors that influence women’s help-seeking process for IPV from formal (e.g., criminal justice system, domestic violence shelter, healthcare services) and informal (e.g., family, friends, neighbors) resources. The purpose of this study was to understand the influences of risk factors in the process of help-seeking for IPV from formal and informal resources among women experiencing IPV.
Methods: Explanatory sequential mixed methods research design was used. In the quantitative phase, a sub-analysis of existing health registry data was performed to identify interconnections between risk factors for women's exposure to three forms of IPV (i.e., physical, sexual, and stalking). Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted with 15 women who had experienced IPV to follow up on interconnected risk factors and IPV exposure that may influence women’s help-seeking process for IPV.
Results: The emergent themes helped further explain the underlying influences of identified risk factors and the understudied potential risk factors (e.g., lack of support from formal and informal resources, isolation, children’s wellbeing, shame/embarrassment) in the process of help-seeking for IPV.
Discussion: Findings could be used to revise and expand current IPV screening tools and prevention programs and incorporate understudied risk factors explored in this study.
“Everyone eats, so everyone poops!”: When Wastewater is the Path to More Equitable Healthcare and Predicting the Next Pandemic
Introduction: In early 2020, the first laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported in the US. The whole world was facing an invisible and deadly threat that was difficult to track. Testing everyone was a logistical nightmare, and once a positive case was confirmed, it was already too late; hundreds of other people had already been infected in that community. Flashforward to 2022, the majority of the people are vaccinated and there are fewer mask mandates in public areas. Many people are using at-home test kits “but” are less likely to report their test results. Clinical cases may be low; however, the fire is still smoldering under the ashes!
Methods: Our good news is “everyone eats, so everyone poops!”. If you are infected with COVID-19, whether you have symptoms or not, your body sheds the virus in your stool. As a result, the presence of the virus can be tested in the wastewater from the communities, and the infection rate at a community level can be tracked or even predicted by a few days.
Results & Discussion: We have established wastewater surveillance for infectious diseases in Eastern Kentucky, tracking COVID infection trends in Appalachia. We have developed various technologies to simplify the wastewater sample processing for low-resource settings, and we are expanding to look for the spread of upcoming infectious diseases such as Monkeypox. This is particularly impactful in rural and low-resource areas across the globe where access to laboratory testing is limited, promoting equity in healthcare access among under-served populations.
Giant lizards shed light into the origins of biodiversity
Have you ever wondered why cardinals are red? Why there are no lions in Kentucky? Or why there are so many kinds of bugs but only a few types of great apes? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. For centuries, scientists have asked what is behind the physical appearance, distribution, and diversity of life. In this talk, I will show how recent advances in the generation and analysis of genetic, anatomical, and environmental data have revolutionized our understanding of biodiversity. In particular, I will present the results of years of research into the biology of monitor lizards, a group that includes the iconic Komodo dragon and other giant carnivorous reptiles. This group of lizards is found across Africa, Asia, Australia, and numerous islands in the Pacific. Some regions, such as Africa, have a handful of species, while places like Australia and New Guinea are crawling with dozens of species of all shapes and sizes. Using large datasets and recently developed methodological approaches, I show that biological interactions between species—such as competition for resources and hybridization—and historical factors—such as island formation and past climate change—determined the way these lizards look, where they live, and how many species are present in particular regions. Ultimately, the integration of multiple sources of evidence is getting us closer to understanding how the diversity of life on Earth came to be.
Targeting the opioid epidemic: Developing an Improved Rescue Agent
In 2020, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 69,000 deaths in the United States have been attributed to opioid overdose and 80% of these fatal deaths involves synthetics such as fentanyl (100 times more potent than morphine) and its analogs. Opioid induced fatalities result from respiratory depression that is the result of agonism at the mu opioid receptor. Currently, there are three opioid antagonists (naloxone, naltrexone and nalmefene) available clinically with the potential to reverse the effects of fentanyl. However, these antagonists are not optimal because of their short duration of action and weak potency compared to fentanyl. Thus, there is a need to develop higher potency and longer-acting opioid antagonists to reverse the respiratory depression of fentanyl and its analogues. Diprenorphine is an opioid partial agonist used in veterinary medicine for reversing the effects of super-potent opioid analgesics such as etorphine and carfentanil that are used for tranquilizing large animals. Due to its intriguing profile of reversing these highly potent opioid agonists, our laboratory has undertaken an optimization campaign to identify a diprenorphine analogue suitable for use in humans as an opioid rescue agent. Through a combination of multi-step organic synthesis and structure-activity relationships studies, we have identified MOR antagonists with enhanced potency compared to naloxone and greater antagonism than diprenorphine.
Defining Worship Spaces: Understanding the Patterns of Pre-Colonial Church Architecture of Thomas Christians of South India
Introduction: Spaces of worship are an integral part of every religion or faith practice across the globe. There are stereotypes and models of architectural styles tied to specific religions that define their worship spaces. For instance, a ‘church building’ is generally conceived as a structure having cross(es), towers, and finials. Nevertheless, mosques are often defined by arches, domes, and minarets. However, little is discussed about the models and patterns of religious art and architecture that are outside the ‘generally accepted standards, which are often created by various cultures and societies who, too, were recipients of the same religious ideas. Has these organic models got absorbed or disappeared under the influence of the accepted models? What is the relevance of cultural variables in defining ‘standards and stereotypes? My research discusses these larger questions with the Thomas Christians of southern India and their conception of worship spaces as the loci.
Discussion: Thomas Christians having no understanding of the patterns of church architecture developing and standardizing in Europe until the 16th century, had developed a style of church architecture divergent from the Western models of churches. My research focuses on how these models were understood by the Europeans, mainly Portuguese in this context, as they encountered these nontraditional models and how the European encounters affected the Thomas Christian conception of worship spaces.
Results: The research is based on archival research and field visits that examined floor plans of churches that predated, and Post dated the Thomas Christian encounters with the Portuguese. The results found the evolution of a hybrid form of church architecture, neither European nor indigenous- with clear indications of struggles for preserving cultural identity.