Four graduate students (Carlos Bueno, James Liman, Jules Nde and Chengxuan Li) affiliated with Center for Theoretical Biology Physics (CTBP) have received Shirley Chan Student Travel Grants for the American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting 2021. The award was presented at the APS DBIO business meeting that was held virtually on March 10, 2021. Descriptions for the abstracts of the four award winners are available here.

Last year when the APS March Meeting had been canceled suddenly due to the ongoing pandemic, two former graduate students (Andrei Gasic and Yossi Eliaz) from the CTBP stepped up to organize two virtual focus sessions. By directly contacting speakers and announcing on social media, Gasic and Eliaz held combined virtual sessions for all the “Physics of Proteins” sessions and “Physics of the cytoskeleton across scales” sessions, respectively. Remarkably, a large number of speakers were able to adapt and successfully deliver their talks virtually. Similarly, this year three CTBP scientists (postdoctoral associate Gasic and grad students Bueno, and Liman) volunteered to organize five focus sessions for the APS March Meeting 2021.

Jules Nde and Chengxuan Li, two junior graduate students who attended and presented abstracts at the APS March meeting for the first time, succeeded in winning grants from among a competitive pool of applicants.

The Shirley Chan Student Travel Grants Award is an esteemed honor for young biophysics researchers. It is granted to the high-quality abstracts in sessions sponsored by DBIO at the APS March Meeting.