Mentor Dr. Vibha Srivastava (left) and Colten Nichols (right) at the PAG31 banquet.
Author: Colten Nichols | Majors: Crop Science, Biochemistry | Semester: Fall 2023
Colten Nichols is a sophomore Crop Science and Biochemistry honors student from Van Buren, Arkansas. His research focuses on analyzing mutant rice varieties. He works with his research mentor Dr. Vibha Srivastava at a crop biotechnology lab on campus.
This past January I had the opportunity to attend the 31 st International Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG31) in San Diego, California. This conference hosts industry leaders and academics at the forefront of genetics research. There was a total of 2,456 attendees representing 60 countries worldwide. This event was a six-day conference with concurrent research presentations every day. The concurrent nature of these presentations allowed conference participants to pick and choose what topics they wanted to listen to for the day. I sat in on presentations with topics ranging from “desert agriculture” and “cattle pangenomes” to “neo-domestication” and “biotechnology entrepreneurship.” Throughout the conference, I had the opportunity to sit in on and take notes at over 40 presentations including three plenary speakers. As I plan to attend graduate school, many of these presentations provided insight into possible areas of study for my future research.
This conference included a poster exhibition in which I was able to present my research to many of the academic and industry leaders attending the conference. I was one of a very few undergraduate students presenting my poster. However, in total, I was one of the 863 participants in the poster exhibition. Even with this LARGE amount of participants, I was able to mingle and share my research with many attendees. I got a lot of good feedback and further questions to explore with my research. Overall, this presentation allowed me to further improve my public speaking and network with individuals in genetics research.
The best part of an international conference is the culmination of culture and diverse perspectives. I enjoyed talking with attendees from all over the world. I met researchers from places like Sweden, China, Singapore, and Germany.
One of my favorite moments from this conference was getting to talk to Dr. Yulin Jia, who is an Arkansas resident and research leader at the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Arkansas. It was a pleasure getting to hear about his work and a relief to meet another Arkansan. I also had the opportunity to sit in on the “rice genetics” workshop that he hosted. My current research focuses on rice genetics, so getting to meet and network with a Goliath in this industry was beyond awesome.
While attending a conference for six days may sound exhausting, there was built-in downtime to reduce conference fatigue. In this downtime, I got to experience a lot of San Diego. I was able to go to SeaWorld, whale watching, and eat a LOT of good food. As an individual interested in the plant sciences, one of the most remarkable things about the trip was getting to see the diverse plant life native to Southern California. Flora like palm trees, birds of paradise, and hibiscus were everywhere. I want to highlight these experiences because they are one of the side perks of traveling to present research: you get to explore the place you travel to!
This experience was invaluable to my future as a researcher. The information, networking, and feedback from this conference will continue to have positive impacts on my research. I highly recommend that any student who is interested in genetics or genomics should attend this conference. I would like to thank the University of Arkansas’ Honors College for providing funding for this trip and my research. I would also like to especially thank my research mentor Dr. Vibha Srivastava who introduced me to this opportunity and helped to fund this trip.