by Angelo Filosa

I saw an advertisement for a Young Scientist Travel Fellowship (YTSF) in an October issue of Science.

It covered the cost of travel, registration and accommodation for the 18th International Congress of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Beyond the Genome, to be held in Birmingham, England, in July. I applied and was accepted.

I was asked to present two posters, one during the symposium for fellowship holders, and the other during the main conference, and to give an oral presentation at the YTSF symposium. There were 120 other fellowship-holders from around the world, and 60 were selected to give presentations.

It was a good opportunity to meet other researchers starting out in their field (i.e. PhD students and post-doctoral fellows), and to interact closely with senior scientists. The highlight was the opening lecture by J. Craig Venter, of Celera Genomics, just weeks after the announcement that the human genome had been sequenced by his company.

There was also an organized social program. We visited Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford, and a well-maintained castle in Warwick.

- Angelo Filosa is a graduate student in biochemistry