Fulbright Science Departments to Host Annual Research Conference

The Arkansas INBRE Research Conference will be hosted this year by the Departments of Physics, Biological Sciences and Chemistry and Biochemistry in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Arkansas INBRE, also known as the Arkansas NIH IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, is sponsoring this event. The conference will include contributions from universities and colleges in not only Arkansas, but several surrounding states as well.

"The purpose of the conference is to highlight fundamental and biomedically related undergraduate research in Arkansas," said Roger Koeppe, director of Outreach for Arkansas INBRE.

Scheduled for Oct. 21-22, the Arkansas INBRE Conference will take place at the Chancellor Hotel, the Fayetteville Town Center and the University of Arkansas campus. It will involve distinguished lectures from authorities in the world of biomedical research, as well as practical activities and workshops.

The first evening of the conference will include a keynote address on magnetic resonance imaging given by Steven Harms, M.D., a clinical professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a radiologist at the Breast Center of Northwest Arkansas. Selected faculty and students will speak Friday afternoon, and there will be a banquet for registered conference guests.

Faculty speakers include Mellissa Kelley, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Central Arkansas, Brett Lehmer, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Arkansas and Tsunemi Yamashita, a professor in the Department of Biology at Arkansas Tech University. Invited undergraduate student speakers will also compete for awards.

The second day of the conference will take place on the University of Arkansas campus. This will involve poster sessions in which students and guests will present research results. There will also be student and faculty discussion groups and workshops. 

For students participating in this conference, aspects of the selection process are competitive. Six undergraduate students each for biology, chemistry and physics are being chosen to give oral presentations. Then, both the undergraduate poster presentations and the undergraduate oral presentations will be judged for awards in each discipline.

Arkansas INBRE is funded by an grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which is under the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Program of the National Institutes of Health. The IDeA program was founded for the purpose of expanding the geographic distribution of NIH funding for biomedical and behavioral research.

For more information or to register for the conference, please visit inbre.uark.edu.