AAAS 2012

By Sean Cohmer

The 2012 AAAS Conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada was a tremendously influential opportunity for me and the rest of the twelve Arizona State University undergraduates who were able to attend. With generous support from the Center for Biology and Society and The Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, our experience at the conference was one that will resonate with us for some time. For me personally, despite having many previous opportunities to communicate in a professional setting, this was my first experience with an international science conference.

At this year’s conference, we had the opportunity to attend workshops and plenary lectures from some of the most influential researchers in the world. The workshops that I attended on personalized, predictive, and preventive medicine as solutions to many of today’s health concerns were inspirational. Many other workshops, involving topics which ranged from public communication of science to environmental policy to energy were available to interested students as well. Students from Arizona State University were also able to serve as session aides, which added to their conference experience.

During the student poster competition, we presented our research in a setting which was both unfamiliar and exciting. We discussed our poster content with the judges, who came from several universities, and other attendees, and heard diverse perspectives of it. These additional perspectives provided a valuable and enlightened appreciation for the complexity of what relating research to the public entails. This appreciation has challenged the way I choose to articulate my work with a revitalized emphasis on broad understanding.