2022 Meeting

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Appalachian state university

Boone, NC

When:

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Where:

Appalachian State University, Leon Levine Hall

1179 State Farm Road, Boone, NC 28608

Invited Speakers:

Dr. Esther Babady

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

ASM Distinguished Lecturer Program - Waksman Foundation Lecture

Esther Babady, Ph.D., D (ABMM), FIDSA, F(AAM) is the Director of the Clinical Microbiology Service, the Director of the CPEP Clinical Microbiology Fellowship program, an Attending Microbiologist and Member (Professor) in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City. Dr. Babady received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and completed a postdoctoral CPEP fellowship in clinical microbiology, both at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., before joining MSKCC. She is board-certified by the American Board of Medical Microbiology, a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She is a senior editor for Microbiology Spectrum and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. Her research interests include rapid diagnosis of infections in immunocompromised hosts, fungal diagnostics and the development and evaluation of the clinical utility of molecular microbiology assays. She has published extensively on these topics.

Dr. Blake Ushijima

Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Wilmington

North Carolina Invitational Lecture

Blake Ushijima, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is active in the ASM organization as a member of the ASM junior advisory group and the ASM Microbe Applied and Environmental Science planning group. Dr. Ushijima received his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Microbiology working on bacterial pathogens that infect corals. His work focused on novel coral pathogens with an emphasis on the pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus, which infects a variety of corals and marine invertebrates. He continued as a postdoc at Oregon State University working on bacterial oyster pathogens and probiotics. He was then awarded the George Burch Research Fellowship to work at the Smithsonian Marine Station studying stony coral tissue loss disease and was one of the lead investigators for the Coral Health and Marine Probiotics (CHAMP) Lab. During his time at the Smithsonian, he worked on developing probiotics to combat the outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) spreading throughout the Caribbean.

Megan Damico, Ph.D. Candidate - University of North Carolina Greensboro

NC ASM Advocacy Speaker

Megan Damico is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), where she uses the honey bee as a model system to study how various environmental and genetic factors drive strain-level community structure and dynamics within host-associated gut microbiomes. In addition to her graduate work, Megan is also a Policy Entrepreneurship Fellow with the Federation of American Scientists, where she works to create stronger regulatory policy actions surrounding microbial therapeutic products, such as probiotics, for agricultural animals. She holds a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences from Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Allendale, Michigan. Outside of her research, Megan volunteers with the North Carolina Audubon Society to lead state-wide advocacy efforts and is an avid birder.

Registration:

To register, please click Registration Link. Pre-registration for NCASM '22 is now closed. If you did not pre-register we cannot guarantee that you will be provided lunch.

Advanced Registration for the meeting is $10 for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, $25 for all other participants.

Registration is now free for Undergraduate Students!

Pre-Registration closes on October 28th, 2022

You may register for online only - this will include access to the talks only on Zoom and is free, please write "virtual" in the paypal line on the registration form

Registration includes the following:

1. Meeting Registration

2. Membership to the NC Branch of the American Society for Microbiology

You will need to pay for your registration (via PayPal) before you are able to submit this registration form. After registering for the meeting through PayPal, you will be directed to a receipt page that includes a Receipt Number or Transaction ID. You will need to include this number in the form below to complete your registration.

*If you are paying for multiple registrations on a single PayPal transaction, please make sure that all registrants fill out a separate Registration Google Form, and include the Transaction ID associated with that bulk purchase.

Once you have registered, submit your Abstract!

If you will be presenting an abstract (poster/talk), you will need to complete an additional, separate, abstract submission form. Abstract Submission is now closed.

Abstract submissions are due October 14, 2022. If you would like to be considered for a travel award, please submit your abstract by October 7, 2022.

Information for Presenters:

We will try an accommodate your preference on presentation format (Talk/Poster).
We will notify you by October 20, 2022 if we are unable to accommodate an oral presentation.
Abstracts need to be submitted as PDF documents and are limited to one total page.
Abstracts that exceed one page will not be accepted.
In order to submit an abstract you need to have completed, and paid for, the meeting registration. You will be asked at the bottom of this form to include your PayPal payment confirmation to complete your abstract submission

All abstracts must abide by the following guidelines in order to be accepted:

Title
All authors (including co-authors) and author institution affiliations
No Images should be presented in the abstract
The abstract should contain a hypothesis, objective or statement about the problem under investigation.
The abstract should contain a brief statement of the experimental methods/methodology used.
Essential results must be present in summary form (even if preliminary).
The abstract should contain a conclusion that explains how the work contributes to the hypothesis, objective or statement of problem.

Agar Art Contest:

NC ASM is hosting an Agar Art Competition for the 2022 Branch Meeting!

Submission Link Agar Art Submission is now closed.

If you would like to make a submission, please upload a photo of your Agar Art using this form by Friday October 14, 2022. You must be registered for the meeting for your submission to be accepted.

Below are some guidelines as outlined by the National ASM:

1. You may use any organism(s), with any type(s) of agar, on any size or shape petri dish.

2. Art needs to have been created safely in the appropriate Bio Safety Level environment for the organism(s) used.

3. Photos need to be digitally untouched, or minimally edited, to improve clarity of the photo. (No False-coloring)

4. Photos should be accompanied by a description that captures the attention of a general public audience

5. Photos need to be high resolution JPEG (minimum 300 dpi)

6. Photos need to be uploaded by October 14, 2022

Prizes will be awarded to the Top Submissions

Individuals may submit more than one entry.

Elections:

The Executive Board meeting will be held during lunch, and will the election of new officers. If you would like to nominate someone or volunteer to run for office, please feel free to do so by sending an email to elections@northcarolinaasm.org.

Presentation Awards:

Mary Poston Award for best student (undergraduate, graduate, or postdoc) presentation
Thoyd Melton Award for best oral presentation by a graduate student
Best Poster Award for, you guessed it, best poster
Paul Phibbs Award for best undergraduate presentation