Snowbird, Utah for Botany & Mycology 2009 - my last day here

I'm heading home this morning, one day before the conference ends. That's the problem with timing I have given the travel time and the Dublin Irish Festival this weekend. Next year looks to be the same or even worse timing - depends on when the festival weekend will be.

At any rate, yesterday was a very full, but productive day. I chaired the morning session on Lamiales and Gesneriales. It was a great session with a lot of good talks, including the one by my co-author on the Penstemon low-copy nuclear gene phylogeny. A quick break for lunch and then I had a talk scheduled in another great session on hybridization and speciation questions. My talk went well, which is always nice, but I have to admire Pam Soltis for her amazing handling of the technical difficulties that resulted in her slides not working. She was talking on the polyploidy of European Tragopogans and her slides just quit changing (Mac incompatibilities with the equipment in use). She was calm and collected and just did the talk sans slides. I know she thinks it was a disaster, but it came across as an amazing display of professionalism. Kudos, Pam.

The genomics talks were interesting. I'm not in that field of systematics, but I sure do appreciate the results of the investment NSF has made into those projects. I also enjoyed meeting Ken Wolfe, the Karling lecture speaker. He talked about genomics of yeast - another topic far afield from my work, but I'm interested in how others are mining the huge genomic databases that are now available.

Genomics is a field of study where whole genomes (all the DNA in the nucleus and organelles) are being sequenced. The information is analyzed for content - genes, repetitive DNA elements, control regions, etc. and the data are deposited into databases that are available for everyone to use. There's a whole new field of science called bioinformatics, which involves the mining of those databases.

I think most people have heard of the human genome project. It's that investment in science that has led to a cost-effective way of sequencing the genomes of other animals, plants, fungi, and microbes. We're learning so much about how life evolved and how it 'works' in terms of development and growth of the organism, and the timing and location of gene expression that makes it all happen. It's a fascinating area of science all on its own, but its particularly interesting in the comparative framework of evolutionary biology.

I also enjoyed visiting with students who did their PhDs with me and are now out on their own, training the next generation of scientists. I'm an academic grandmother and all of my 'progeny' have been pretty impressive. That's a great feeling, to know that I've contributed to our knowledge base through my career as a scientist. It's also incentive to stay current with what's going on in my field - it changes so rapidly. Genomics wasn't even a word when I started coming to these annual meetings in the late 1980's and now this field of study dominates funding priorities and research in systematics. Pretty amazing.

Ok, this 'interlude' is done and I'll resume my Nepal trek posts later in the week. Then I'll have another interlude for the Dublin Irish Festival - coming this weekend. One of the biggest and best in the world - don't miss it!

Snowbird, Utah for Botany & Mycology 2009 meeting - day 2

Yesterday was very, very busy, but also very productive. I have to confess that I honestly did not want to take the time to come to this meeting for a variety of reasons. First, the timing of this meeting is really awful for me, personally. This coming weekend is the Dublin Irish Festival and having to take four days out of my schedule ahead of the biggest gig of the year for Aisling is a real pain. Second, I've felt disconnected for the past couple of years and really didn't think I would be comfortable back in the thick of things. Third, I've been away from home way too much this year already.

Thus, I had a lousy attitude going in, but the first day of the meeting was a tonic of sorts. I had some fantastic conversations, received some invitations to do seminar visits, plus the start of a new collaboration. All those things are what these meetings are about, plus getting to sit in on some great talks and see where the cutting edge in my field is at the moment.

So, let that be a lesson to be learned - just do it!

One of the highlights from yesterday was a talk given by Noel Holmgren of the New York Botanical Garden. He presented an overview and history of the Intermountain Flora and I truly enjoyed seeing the slides of Art Cronquist, Art Holmgren, Jim Reveal and Noel and Pat in the field, plus the amazing landscapes of the intermountain flora region. It's such a fantastic project that was conceived seven decades ago.

ps - the scenery here isn't hard on the eyes, either.

Snowbird, Utah for Botany & Mycology 2009 meeting

My Nepal posts will be interrupted for this brief interlude to my annual scientific conference. I'm in Snowbird, Utah for the Botany & Mycology 2009 meeting. Snowbird is a lovely setting for a meeting; a ski resort with the conference center sitting at 8,100 feet. The top of the resort is at 11,000 feet, I think. It must be higher than the mountain I'm looking at from my room, because the tramway goes up and over that spot.

Here's a picture of my view, taken with my cell phone.



I'm watching the sun work it's way down from the peak this morning, so my view is to the east.

I arrived mid-afternoon yesterday and it was pretty hot outside. I enjoyed watching ground squirrels on the grass - they must have dens in the slope down to the stream. There are a lot of plants in bloom up here as well and I photographed a couple of different Penstemons yesterday in the calm air at dusk.

I went to the Plenary lecture, given by Nancy Turner, on the ethnobotany of Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples. It was pretty interesting and I learned a lot of new things about the use of plants in those cultures. The mixer was afterwards - well attended, but I never enjoy those kinds of things. I don't know why I haven't developed a social ability after all these years in academia, but I'm always uncomfortable in a mixer setting. I need to bring Emma, my miniature dachshund - that would make it bearable. She doesn't have any trouble approaching strangers and distant acquaintances for some social interactions.




Doesn't this picture just scream, "Love me! I'm adorable!" ?







One thing I didn't know about Snowbird is that the bird doesn't go for the early worm around here. This place is shut tight until 7 am. That's pretty hard for an early riser on east coast time, especially with it not getting light until well after 6 am. Oh well - off to my first session this morning. Should be an interesting couple of days for the beginning of this week and then the Dublin Irish Festival is next weekend.