Students Spend Winter Break at Bio Conference
This week, four students presented their research to some of the brightest minds in the biology field. Traveling to Atlanta, the students took part in the 2025 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) annual meeting.
Maddie James ’25, Sami Pajak ’25, Erian Stewart ’27, and Peculiar Emmanuel-king ’27 traveled with professors Morgan Carr-Markell, Vanessa Hilliard, and Katie Whitlow, all faculty within the Department of Biology. Alumna Emily Volpe ’24, now a graduate student at Northern Arizona University, also presented her latest research.
The SICB conference offered attendees 12 symposia on current topics, along with workshops and keynotes. Its poster sessions allow students to showcase their undergraduate and graduate research in all areas of the biology field. The society also publishes two scientific journals: the bimonthly journal Integrative and Comparative Biology (formerly the American Zoologist) and Evolution & Development.
According to Carr-Markell, James and Stewart shared their research on what factors affect how much energy honey bees put into recruiting their sisters to visit flowers and collect pollen, while Pajak and Emmanuel-king discussed how the use of machinery can help identify bee pollen grains.
The students were supported by the Marjorie Neuhoff Summer Science Research Communities Grants and Jill M. Tiefenthaler Student Research Grants.
“National conferences like this one are an excellent way for students to learn about cutting-edge research, consider what careers interest them, gain confidence in presenting, and network with researchers at other institutions who they might work with in the future,” Carr-Markell said. “Saint Mary's support for students attending conferences is an important investment in their future success.”
She noted that students did an impressive job of connecting with people at the conference. “All four students did an excellent job of explaining their work to many different researchers.”
January 10, 2025