UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering postdoctoral researcher Joe Reda had “little butterflies” in their stomach.
The Hubbell Lab researcher, who recently received their PhD, is accustomed to speaking to immunologists. But at the PME Research Symposium on Friday, they had to condense years of research into a 15-minute talk for experts in polymers, batteries, water, quantum physics and the other diverse subject areas that make up PME’s interdisciplinary community.
“It takes you out of this lens of the stakeholder being the immunologist that you want to convince, and makes you ask, ‘Okay, why should society want this work to happen?’” Reda said. “That’s what we all have in common at PME. We want to know the truth, we want to make better stuff and we’re in society together.”
Co-Founder of Dimension, Inx and UIC Assoc. Prof. Ramille Shah provided the keynote, sharing her experience in both the private and academic sectors to stimulate the PME students’ already entrepreneurial mindsets.
“It’s a pipeline for talent. It brings in new ideas and new research partnerships,” said UL Director, Innovation & Technology, Craig Hamill. “We have our own scale of work, but universities have larger scale, larger partnerships, bringing in more and more ideas. They have more interdisciplinary pathways.”
“PME has an incredibly unique academic environment as it brings together people from drastically distinct research areas. Today, we wanted to celebrate that interdisciplinarity by getting everyone in the same room and showcasing the amazing research we have going on at PME,” Konnick said. “The most interesting, exciting, impactful research comes when scientists and engineers break down those artificial disciplinary barriers to brainstorm and work together. That’s the guiding principle behind both this symposium and PME as a whole.”
Communication
Whether participating in the 15-minute talks or presenting posters on their research, the symposium was a chance for students and postdocs to show off their science communication skills.
For Rowan Group PhD student Charlie Lindberg, it was also a chance to show off her sense of humor. Taking inspiration from 1970s punk legends The Clash, she titled her poster on dynamic liquid crystal elastomers “Should I stay or should I flow?”
“Presenting science with humor lowers the stakes for someone in the audience to ask ‘dumb’ questions, which are honestly my favorite questions,” Lindberg said. “They demonstrate both the willingness to admit you don’t understand something as well as the desire put yourself out there to learn more about it.”
Lindberg’s gambit paid off. She took first place in the poster category. PhD candidate Jiachong Chu of the de Pablo Group took second.
As an engineering student in a UChicago Department of Pathology lab, PME PhD candidate Benjamin Doran works across silos daily. He presented the human gut microbe research he’s conducting for the Raman Lab.
He said the symposium was a chance to hone the communication skills all scientists need.
“It’s okay to do research in a dark corner, but if no one knows about it, if no one understands it, it’s not going to actually have an effect on the world,” Doran said.
Gervasio Zaldivar, a postdoctoral researcher in the de Pablo Group, said creating a 15-minute talk for an outside audience was “a good exercise” for any researcher.
“You’re always focusing on the details,” he said. “This makes you look at your research from a distance and see what people will find attractive. What’s the main story?”
Partnerships
Industry and other partner groups from outside PME were also in attendance, either as judges or to learn about new research.
Chicago Council on Science and Technology Program & Internship Manager Kylie Kosulic attended the event to learn more about PME’s work and potentially to scout speakers for the council’s public science events.
“I came to PME because there’s so much cool science happening here,” she said. “The more we know about science and the science that’s happening in our city, the more we can connect those scientists with people who want to learn.”
Hollister Incorporated, which develops, manufactures and markets healthcare products worldwide, is a longstanding partner with PME. The relationship started four years ago with the engineering design capstone course, but has since “snowballed,” said Hollister Senior Scientist Adrian Defante.
The collaboration, he said, benefits both sides.
“If we don’t get outside of our walls, we’re going to be myopic in the way we do things,” Defante said.
PME PhD candidate Reem Yasser, who studies biophysics with the Weinstein Lab, was among the many students and postdoctoral researchers who went to the symposium not to present or display, but to learn. She said she attended to find ways she could collaborate with researchers from other areas.
“That’s what PME is all about,” she said. “It’s about the collaborations, the interdisciplinary collaborations this place creates.”