Catriona Condon beat more than 50 other fellow PhD students to win this years Best Talk in the Evolutionary Ecology division at this year’s Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting in Boston (3-7 January). This international conference, attended by more than 1500 delegates, was definitely memorable for the large Lab contingent attending that included PhD students Billy Van Uitregt, Catriona Condon, Candice Bywater and Kirstin Pratt, along with Robbie. The highlights included touring a snowy Harvard campus, eating some great Lebanese and Italian meals, sampling the local Boston brews (& late night pizzas), and meeting academics and students from across the US and Europe. All Lab students gave outstanding talks on their PhD work and enjoyed some good networking. Catriona’s best student talk was based on her PhD research examining ‘The thermal acclimation responses of zebrafish to multiple environment signals.’ Well done, Catriona! Robbie’s poster on using documentary videos in first year ecology courses was also well received—he had a whole crowd of people checking out some sample videos on the school iPod—but alas they don’t give awards to people that use lab funds for such frivolous activities. Next year’s conference is in Seattle and is sure to have another large lab presence… better luck holding on to your credit card at that one Billy.
The postgrads were rewarded for their efforts at the conference with extended trips before and after. New years in New York City was fun (from what we remember). We could really get used to the academic lifestyle.