Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Student travel awards to the GTA meeting

I received the following information in an email this morning.  Please contact Maria below if interested. 

We are writing to announce the Annual Meeting of the Genetic Toxicology Association (GTA) and inform you about the travel awards available to students and young investigators (not to exceed 5 years of post-doctoral training).  If you, your faculty colleagues or any of your students would be interested in attending the Annual Meeting of the GTA in Newark, Delaware on May 7-8, 2014.  The scientific program and registration information are available at http://www.gta-us.org.  Poster abstract submission deadline is March 7 deadline.  Registration fees are waived for students and young investigators who register before April 7.

v  The GTA will grant 4 travel awards in the amount of $750 to attend this meeting.  The awardees will be chosen by the GTA based on the abstract submitted to this meeting.
v  Also, the Environmental Mutagen and Genomics Society (EMGS) is offering a $500 dollar travel award for a GTA new investigator/student to attend the 2014 EMGS meeting at Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida from September 13–17, 2014.  All abstracts from students and new investigators will automatically be considered for the EMGS Travel Award.  The awardee will be chosen by the GTA based on the poster presentation at the GTA meeting. this is the last year EMGS meeting in Florida.

Program Highlights
Wednesday, May 7, 2014:
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Keynote Speaker: Tox21: High Throughput Screening, Toxicity Pathway Profiling, and Biological Interpretation of Findings by Russell Thomas, NCCT, USEPA
ICH M7 & QSAR Analysis
Summary of Topics Discussed at 2013 IWGT Meeting in Brazil
Poster session
Student Breakfast
Genetic Toxicology For Cosmetic Ingredients
Retrospective Data Analysis Of Genetic Toxicology Assays
Harnessing the Power of New Technologies and Discovery

The Genetic Toxicology Association (GTA) is an educational and scientific organization that was founded in 1975. Its primary purpose is to promote the development of the science of genetic toxicology and to foster the exchange and dissemination of information concerning the field. Membership in the GTA is open to anyone interested in genetic toxicology. The majority of members come from the mid-Atlantic and New England regions. The membership includes professionals from a diverse cross-section of organizations: industrial, academic, governmental and commercial. The GTA thus provides a unique and important opportunity for scientists from different types of organizations to routinely and openly exchange knowledge, ideas, views and insights.

One of the GTA’s objectives is to attract students from different specialties to the field of genetic toxicology. To help in this effort, we invite students and sponsoring faculty to attend their first GTA meeting as nonpaying guests. We have focused most of our attention on institutions of higher learning that are located within 150 miles of our meeting site at the University of Delaware in Newark so that they can drive to this two-day meeting.

Students who attend the upcoming meeting will be exposed to discussion of both basic and applied science brought to bear on answering some of the most important topics in our field. As an added incentive, we will be sponsoring a breakfast for student-scientist at which students will be able to sit with GTA members from commercial laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies, enabling them to ask about career trajectories in those various directions.

Please feel free to contact us for more information.  We invite you and any interested students to come attend the meeting. Upon submitting an abstract all students or young investigators are eligible for the travel award (http://www.gta-us.org).

Sincerely,
Maria Engel
GTA Student Outreach Coordinator

Maria Engel, MS

Drug Safety Research & Development

Genetic Toxicology

Pfizer, Inc.

Phone: 860-441-0549

Alternate Email: maria.e.engel@pfizer.com

Monday, February 3, 2014

Martins-Green and Curras-Collazo's research on 3rd hand smoke spotlighted


 ETOX faculty members, Drs. Manuela Martins-Green and Maggie Curras-Collazo, and collaborators have recently published a study describing some of the adverse effects of 3rd hand smoke.  Their work shows that mice that were exposed to materials that had been exposed to tobacco smoke exhibited damage to their liver and lungs, hyperactivity and delayed wound healing.  The research is described in an article in UCR Today (the photo above is from the article by Iqbal Pittalwala.) but has been picked up by many news organizations.  For example here is one from Canada.  Our congratulations to Manuela and Maggie for this important work. 

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Postdoctoral postions at Health Canada

The Genetic Toxicology Group at Health Canada has recently had a number of projects approved for funding and will be hiring several postdoctoral fellows over the coming months.  The positions are expected to last between April 2014 and April 2017. The areas of focus are molecular toxicology, nanotoxicology, genetic toxicology, and applied genomics.  There are excellent scientists and mentors in this research group  who are a very active, well equipped, well funded.  Health Canada's postdoctoral fellow salaries are competitive ($50 to $55k per year).  The post-docs are engaged under the Visiting Fellowships program for Canadian government laboratories (http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/students-etudiants/pd-np/laboratories-laboratoires/index_eng.asp).  There is no requirement for citizenship and all qualified candidates are welcomed.  If interested and qualified, please contact Paul White at paul.white@hc-sc.gc.ca.  Good luck.