Events

Here Come the Computers

NIH AI Symposium Highlights IRP Efforts to Harness Artificial Intelligence

human body covered with computer code

Artificial intelligence is permeating seemingly every aspect of society — it’s even the villain in the latest Mission Impossible movie. Biomedical research is no exception to this trend, as showcased at this year’s NIH AI Symposium. The day-long event on May 16 showcased the many ways IRP researchers are harnessing the ever-growing learning capabilities of computers to explore how our bodies work and improve our health.

In between fascinating lectures by IRP senior investigators and visiting scholars from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a handful of IRP postbaccalaureate fellows, graduate students, and postdocs also gave short talks about how their labs are utilizing AI and machine learning in their research. Read on to learn about how four of these efforts could one day help speed up therapeutic development for cancer and rare diseases, reveal the relationship between brain activity and behavior, and identify patients with sickle cell disease who would benefit the most from high-risk, intensive treatments.

A Peek at This Year’s Postbac Poster Day

Annual Event Provides Showcase for IRP Postbaccalaureate Fellows

IRP postbac fellow Angel Obiorah with her research poster

As informative as undergraduate science courses can be, there’s no better way to learn the ins and outs of biology than to scrutinize and manipulate it in the lab every day. That’s why so many science enthusiasts flock to NIH after college to participate in the IRP Postbaccalaureate IRTA Program, which allows newly minted grads to spend a year or two working full-time in a lab at NIH. And rather than demonstrating the knowledge they’ve gained on a test, IRP postbacs get to present their research at NIH’s Postbac Poster Day each year, an environment akin to the poster sessions at scientific conferences many postbacs will be attending as they continue their scientific careers.

This year, more than 900 IRP postbacs showed off their research at the event, and unlike prior years, all their presentations were done during one absolutely jam-packed day rather than being spread over two days. Read on to learn about how five of them have taken advantage of the opportunity to work in IRP labs over the past year.

Get a Glimpse of NIH’s Graduate Student Science

Aspiring Scientists Show off Research Findings at Annual Event

IRP graduate student Angel Delgado

The NIH IRP provides not only a world-class environment for skilled scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries, but also an exhilarating training ground for the next generation of researchers. Among the many budding scientists working on NIH’s campuses are graduate students conducting part of their dissertation research in IRP labs. 

Of course, these ambitious trainees aren’t waiting until they receive their degrees to contribute to scientific breakthroughs. At this year’s Graduate Student Research Symposium, more than 100 of them presented research on topics ranging from the skin condition psoriasis to the role of immune cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Read on to learn more about some of the ways current IRP graduate students have expanded our understanding of the human body.

Sharing Science at the NIH Research Festival

Poster Sessions Showcase IRP Discoveries

IRP postdoctoral fellow Siobhan Lawler

No single event captures the incredible breadth of research going on in the IRP as effectively as the annual NIH Research Festival. In fact, the event is so jam-packed that it typically stretches over multiple days, running this year from September 23-25. The first day of the 2024 Research Festival kicked off with a poster session where scientists from all across NIH showcased the cutting-edge science they have been working on, demonstrating research on subjects like how cooking affects the brain, vaping’s impact on lung health, 3D models for studying pregnancy complications, and much more. Read on to dive deeper into a few of the more than 400 research projects presented at this celebration of IRP science.

A Summer of Science

Summer Poster Days Showcase IRP Summer Intern Research

IRP summer intern Thomas Savage

Every summer, NIH welcomes hundreds of enthusiastic young men and women to its campuses to work as summer interns, providing them with scientific training and mentorship from some of the world’s preeminent researchers. As always, the Summer Internship Program culminated this year with Summer Poster Days, held on August 1 and 2, a bustling event where summer interns showcase the results of their immersion into IRP research. Nearly 800 IRP summer interns participated in this year’s event, presenting research on cancer vaccines, new applications for virtual reality technology, experimental antifungal treatments, how the brain perceives pitch in sounds, and much more. Read on for a glimpse at some of this year’s summer interns and the work they braved a blazing Washington, D.C., summer to pursue.

IRP Scientists Sound Off in Three-Minute Talks

Annual Competition Tests Researchers’ Communication Skills

three hourglasses

Many scientists say that English is the international language of science, but if it is, it’s a form of English that many fluent English speakers might have trouble understanding. From ‘allosteric modulator’ to ‘zinc finger nuclease,’ the words that scientists use to talk about what they do can sound like a foreign language.

Fortunately, many current and upcoming scientists are making it a priority to learn how to communicate with people who don’t share their deep knowledge. As part of this effort, NIH’s annual Three-Minute Talks (TmT) competition brings forth dozens of IRP postbacs, graduate students, and postdocs to talk about their research to an audience of peers outside their own labs. On June 27, this year’s 11 finalists delivered clear, engaging, and — most importantly — short talks on topics ranging from skin bacteria to saliva.

NIH Book Talk Highlights IRP Cancer Research

"A Fatal Inheritance" Author Larry Ingrassia Discusses His New Book

Lawrence Ingrassia at the NIH event

In June 2024, Mr. Lawrence Ingrassia visited NIH to give a talk about his book, A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Medical Mystery, which evolved from interviews with current and former IRP researchers, including IRP scientist emeritus Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr., M.D.

Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS) is an inherited disorder caused by deleterious variants in the TP53 tumor-suppressor gene that lead to very elevated risk of cancers, including sarcomas, brain, breast, and many others. Investigators at NIH have followed families with LFS since the syndrome was first described in 1969 by Dr. Fraumeni and his late collaborator, Dr. Frederick P. Li. Drs. Li and Fraumeni’s seminal discovery was the foundation on which studies of genetic susceptibility to cancer were built.

Say Hi to AI

NIH AI Symposium Highlights Potential of New Computational Tools

human head made out of computer circuits

The human brain is often compared to a computer. Although scientists and philosophers have long debated the appropriateness of that analogy, there’s no doubt that if our brains are computers, evolution takes its sweet time between software updates. Compare that to the rapid advancement of modern computers and it’s clear why many researchers are turning to software to assist the biological computer nature placed in their own heads.

On May 17, NIH celebrated this remarkable partnership between humans and machines with its first-ever Artificial Intelligence Symposium, a day-long event that brought together researchers from all around the IRP to share the ways their work is taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which aims to create computers that can learn the way we do. Anyone in attendance surely came away in awe of the possibilities for how such technologies could accelerate our investigation into the mysteries of biology and the development of new medical treatments. For those who missed it, read on for a rundown of a few of the many research projects IRP researchers presented at the event.

Postbac Poster Day Presents a Buffet of Biology

Young Scientists Demonstrate Fruits of Their IRP Research

IRP postbaccalaureate fellow Monica Mesecar with her poster at Postbac Poster Day

There’s nothing quite like visiting NIH’s Postbac Poster Day to boost your faith that the future of biomedical science is bright. On May 1 and 2, more than a thousand recent college graduates participating in NIH’s Postbac program showed their colleagues, friends, and family the fascinating projects they’re working on in IRP labs. From delving into the aging brain to making sense of the bacteria on our skin, these aspiring researchers demonstrated that they have the passion needed to unravel the most complex mysteries of human biology. Read on to learn about the scientific questions just a few of them have been doggedly investigating over the past year.

Symposium Spotlights Promising Female Scientists

Annual Event Recognizes Three Young Researchers’ Scientific Accomplishments

Dr. Jennifer Zink

For decades, NIH has been working to solve the problems that have long stymied the careers of many young women interested in becoming scientists. As that essential effort continues, it’s important to shine a spotlight on some of the talented female researchers who are contributing to our knowledge of human health and biology right now.

One way the IRP does that is through the annual NIH Women Scientists Advisors (WSA) Scholar Award Symposium, which each year gives three early-career female scientists working in NIH labs the opportunity to present their work to the entire IRP community. At this year’s symposium, which took place April 29, the most recent group to be named WSA Scholars by NIH’s Women Scientists Advisors committee discussed their efforts to probe pollution’s impact on health, improve immunotherapy for cancer, and examine how screen time affects kids. Read on to learn more about their award-winning research.