ACS Conference and Road Trip

This last week I traveled to Park City, Utah to present research at the Regional American Chemical Society Meeting that was held there. I met my professor from CBC and WSU, Karen Grant, in Richland Saturday morning (I got up at 4:00am to pack and arrive in Richland by 8:00am.) We traveled to Park City in one day, stopping for a nice lunch in Boise, a quick trip to Malad Canyon (right before Twin Falls), and dinner at Red Rock in Salt Lake City. We arrived at Park City at about 1:00am. The ACS meeting didn't start until dinner the next day, so the next morning we spent some time looking around Park City shops.

At the opening ACS mixer I presented my poster about the research conducted by our FaST Team (Faculty and Student Research Team) last summer at PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory). Our research consisted of developing a method to detect ¹³C enriched fatty acids from two different cell lines, and a way to quantify and compare the differences between the lines. The cell lines were a normal wildtype and a myc knockout. Myc is an important transcription factor that influences many metabolic functions and is deregulated in 50% of cancers. A scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research needed a quantification method like the one we developed to determine the primary source of Acetyl CoA in the knockout cell, which would potentially indicate one of the metabolic roles of myc, and allow for selective targeting of cancer cells. Our method utilized Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry. I had several people stop by for the "spiel." One of the first people I talked to offered his position at the POGIL workshop (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) the next day! The workshop was a limited all day deal that provided teaching materials for the student-led classroom, and it filled up immediately.

The next day I attended the POGIL workshop with Esther and Karen, and we found it very interesting. Although none of us buy into the total immersion model, we all felt that choosing appropriate activities utilizing this method could be beneficial for students. They provided a lot of materials and it was fun to check them out.
That evening Karen and I attended the banquet.

The next day Esther and I rented mountain bikes and went on a little four mile ride (two miles downhill, and returning two miles uphill). The altitude really didn't bother either of us much and we really enjoyed the scenery. The path followed streams and swampy areas, and we saw two cinnamon teals and a blue wing teal. We attended symposiums for the day and then ended the day with dinner with Todd Rogers, another faculty from CBC, Eric Hoppe, an adjunct professor (and mentor for the FaST team at PNNL) and the students that came with Todd that from the Chemistry club at CBC. We ate at the Roadhouse Grill and I had a wonderful Ahi Tuna dish.

The next day, I attended Esther's presentation concerning the project she is working on at PNNL, and then we decided to check out the olympic village. The facility was really BIG and nice! There is a little visitors center/museum, which leads out to the actual training grounds for potential olympic athletes. We watched people come down the short, freestyle aerial ski jumps into a pool that had air constantly bubbled up from the bottom to help break their fall. They were FANTASTIC! We also were able to watch the long distance skiers come down the K120. It was amazing to watch them ski on the plastic material that the hill is coated with. They actually coasted up the grass hill at the end before stopping right in front of us. After watching them for a while, we decided to go down the zip line they had installed over the top of the K120 jump. The line is supposedly the steepest in the world. It was quite a trip to ride up the ski lift up the VERY steep hill, strap ourselves into harness seats, and wait for the doors to open that released us down the hill! They obviously had a speed regulation device, because we only got up to about 50mph, but it was really fun! We actually went twice. We returned to the meeting for the last symposiums in the afternoon, and then Eric and Esther went on a hike in the high Uintas, and Karen and I drove down to Sundance, and then out to
Cascade Springs. We took a nice little hike there, and then returned for dinner. The other teachers and students left for home Wednesday morning, so Eric, Karen, Esther and I went out to dinner at a fantastic restaurant on main street called Terigo. They had lovely outdoor patio surrounded by blooming fruit trees, and the food we had was fantastic! Karen treated Ester and I to dinner as our birthday gift (we have the same birthday ten years apart!).

Thursday we traveled home, but stopped in Ogden to see Megan and Jesse and the new house. Will took a few minutes to stop by too, and it was fun to introduce them to Karen and to chat for a while. We continued home and had a fantastic dinner in Pendleton at a place called Raphaels. I dropped off Karen around midnight, and then got home about 2am. It was a long day, but good to be home. It was a good trip, and kind of fun to be back in Utah, and to see some old haunts.