Our 2025 annual retreat will be on October 24-26 at the Stanford Sierra Conference Center, Fallen Leaf Lake, Tahoe. Stay tuned for details!

2024 Annual Retreat

Our annual retreat was held October 18-20, 2024, at the Stanford Sierra Conference Center, Fallen Leaf Lake, Tahoe. Dr. Neil Hunter, HHMI Investigator and Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at UC Davis, gave the keynote talk on Friday. The talk included a discussion of the speaker’s unconventional education and career path, as well as his current research projects. The second keynote address was delivered on Saturday evening by Dr. Katja Brose, Science Program Officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Dr. Brose discussed her experience as Editor in Chief of the journal Neuron, various projects she worked on with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and her experience with advancing her career and changing career paths. The retreat was attended by 23 Program Trainees, 26 first-year graduate students, including 6 undergraduate students from the NIH-funded MARC program, 6 students from the NIH-funded PREP Program, as well as graduate students and postdocs from trainer laboratories. 

All 16 currently funded trainees gave oral presentations at the retreat. We included a real-time Qualtrics based evaluation link in the scientific program to enable participants to provide anonymous feedback on each of the Trainee talks. That feedback was then provided to trainees. 15 attendees presented posters, among them graduate students, NIH MARC-funded undergraduate students, one Trainer and two junior faculty members. 

To engage first-year graduate students attending the retreat, several topics relevant to first year graduate students were discussed at five Saturday lunch topic tables, with discussions led by faculty trainers, First-year graduate students participated enthusiastically in this activity.