The 2018 ASBMB Annual meeting – Saturday April 21 – Sunday April 22.

On Saturday, April 21 2018, The Molecular Bioscience and Society (MoBioS) at Pasadena City College went to the 2018 Annual Meeting for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) in San Diego. There were 12 of us (me + 11 PCC students). Students learned many interesting scientific breakthroughs. They particularly enjoy the Tang Lecture: Feng Zhang (Broad Institute – MIT) in the latest development on CRISPR technology. They also love the vendor show…. lots of interesting gadgets, books, and freebies!

The Wouk Lecture – Fri May 19, 2017

Speaker: Gwynne Shotwell, President & COO of SpaceX

Interesting talk. The speaker showcased exciting developments in SpaceX for 30 minutes. Then, the audience got to ask their question for another 30 minutes. I learned a bit more about SpaceX as a company. Their mission is to build transportation to and from Mars. Certainly, there are other issues that need to be addressed before we can start colonizing the red planet. However, those are not the main focus of the company.

Mars, solar roof, and now….. broadband internet connection! Way to go, SpaceX!

One interesting question from the audience about having window on the rocket. It blew my mind that transparent aluminum window with the size of a laptop cost around $30,000!! It’s equivalent to one graduate student annual salary!  =O

Pasadena March for Science – Earth day, Sat Apr 22, 2017

The is the view from my old lab at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Although the crowd was not in the order of thousands, it is quite remarkable that a small caltech community can gather this amount of crowd. A larger local march for science was held the same day in Los Angeles.

Interesting observation, for some reason that guy at the bottom right was doing backflip.  =D