Mississippi INBRE Hosts Inaugural Mississippi IDeA/EPSCoR Conference 2022

• Post by: Danny Holland
• August 16, 2022
• Comments off

The Mississippi IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), in conjunction with the Mississippi Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) hosted the inaugural Mississippi IDeA/EPSCoR Conference 2022 on July 28, 2022, at the Lake Terrace Convention Center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The conference featured over 400 attendees and 171 presentations in both oral and poster format, including many from University of Southern Mississippi (USM) faculty and students. The meeting is considered a great success.

Highlights include the MHD2022 opening session by Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney, “State of the State,” as well as the closing session hosted by Dr. Nelson Atehortua De la Pena, Director of the Office of Health Data and Research for the MSDH.

Owing to the conference’s success was its unique structure. Bringing students, researchers, and public health professionals together, the meeting featured both a STEM track and the second annual Mississippi Health Disparities 2022 (MHD2022). Hosted by Mississippi INBRE, MHD is an annual meeting focused on public health research, with the overall goal to eliminate health disparities in Mississippi. Collaboration amongst these varied groups is rare and made for a day full of scientific breakthroughs and discovery.

“Mississippi INBRE was proud to organize a venue for students and scientists from across the state to present their work. This was the first time multiple programs participated, leading to an event with over 400 attendees. With the scale of the meeting, researchers from a breadth of disciplines were attracted– from chemists to cell biologists, to those involved in public health. Seeing this success, we hope to plan a similar conference next year!” says Dr. Alex Flynt, Program Director of Mississippi INBRE and Associate Professor in USM’s Center for Molecular and Cellular Biosciences.

Mississippi INBRE is also very pleased to have offered such a stimulating opportunity for students to gain presentation experience. Not only were undergraduate poster sessions hosted on both the STEM and MHD2022 tracks, but nearly every session on the STEM track featured graduate student speakers.

Click here to see photos from the conference. 

For more information about Mississippi Health Disparities, click here.