Honors Student Matt Brown Presents at the Biophysical Society Conference
First of all, my name is Matt Brown and I am from Greeley, Colorado. I’m studying biochemistry and I’d like to become a physician-scientist. I have a wide range of interests. I guess my focus is in biochemistry and research but I am also interested in languages and good books. I really wanted to get involved in undergraduate research, so I joined a lab during my sophomore year. Since then I’ve been learning how to do research and I’ve been working independently for a while. I find it really fun to try new things in the lab; you never know what might happen!
I attended the Biophysical Society Conference last weekend in San Diego, along with other members of my lab, where I presented my work over the past few years in a poster session. The Biophysical Society is an international scientific community that encompasses a wide-range of disciplines all concerned with biophysics. The conference consisted of poster sessions, symposiums, and workshops, and it also featured researchers from universities and businesses all over the world.
Like I said before, I presented a poster that showcased my work over the past few years. My lab works with outer membrane proteins in Gram-negative bacteria. I work specifically with an outer membrane protein complex that helps to maintain the integrity of the outer membrane. We understand its role, but we do not understand its mechanism of action. I, and several others in my lab, have been working to gain a better understanding of how it does its job.
I thought the conference was really cool. It was great to be surrounded by other scientists and to see some of the cool work other people have been doing. It is really inspiring to see so many different researchers from all around the world sharing their ideas and findings. It helped me realize that I am not a solitary researcher working in a lab with a few other people, but a member of a larger community of people working together to expand our collective knowledge. It’s really neat to come to that realization.