Tasmia Ahmed & Paola Cruz Flores- Ireland Conference- "The TGF-β Superfamily Conference: Signaling in Development and Disease"

Aug. 1, 2022
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Tasmia & Paola smiling

This past summer, we had this amazing opportunity to visit Ireland to attend a conference. The whole trip was 2-weeks long. The first week we spent in the conference, and the following week we roamed all around Ireland and visited some very cool places. The federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) organized the conference entitled: “The TGF-β Superfamily Conference: Signaling in Development and Disease,” that took place in Malahide, Ireland, from July 17th to July 21st, 2022. Lee lab is fundamentally a TGFβ signaling focused lab. As the conference was exploring specifically the field of TGFβ signaling, it was an extremely beneficial experience for both our professional and academic development. We received the GPSC travel grant and a NIH travel award for attending the conference. We both have presented a short talk and a poster where we presented our research from our recent publications. For our short talks we both won the ‘outstanding short talk’ awards in the category of talks presented by the graduate students.It was very exciting to meet some of the greatest researchers in the TGFβ field whose work we have been avidly following, citing and have been collaborating with but had never got the chance to meet them in person until this conference. This conference was an excellent platform to establish ourselves as young researchers and has helped us incredibly to learn from the top scientists and our peers from different parts of the world.The week following the conference, we spent in enjoying the picturesque scenic beauty of Ireland! Words or pictures cannot justify the beauty and the serenity of this country. We have visited couple of the classic tourist attraction spots such as The Cliffs of Moher, Aran’s Island, Killarney National Park, The Rink of Kerry and the Dublin city especially the Trinity College. We loved the castles especially because of their histories and stories related to them. Also loved the road trips that we took; those journeys were fantastic scenic drives in itself.The drives by the mighty Atlantic along with the beautiful weather has made the journey very refreshing and enjoyable. We have learned a lot about the Irish culture, food, art, history, and had a very fond memory to participate in an Irish dance with the local dancers! The whole experience in Ireland will certainly be one of our best memories and we will always cherish them for the fabulous time we spent there.

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Building in Ireland

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Tasmia in front of a castle

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Tasmia and Paola on a horse and carriage