Students Attend Biochemistry Conference—and One Returned with an Award
Twelve Vassar students attended the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) in Washington, D.C. in March. One of the students—Chi Nguyen ’26, a biochemistry and economics double major from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam—won a top award in the undergraduate poster competition. The students were accompanied by Associate Professor of Biology Colin Echeverría Aitken and Assistant Professor of Chemistry Rebecca Pollet.
Nguyen’s poster addressed research she has been doing in the Aitken lab on translation initiation, the process of turning ribonucleic acid (RNA) into proteins. It’s a process she calls “fundamental to life.”
Her prize-winning poster summarized current bottlenecks in the research. The goal was to get feedback from other scientists at the conference “because what we don’t know is a big part of science,” she said. Other Vassar students who contributed to Nguyen’s research project were Daniel Wunschel ’26, Katerina Hristova ’27, and Colin Mikulski ’26.
During the conference, the students had dinner with Vassar alums working in the field. They were: Cathy Drennan ’85, Professor of Biology and Chemistry and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and recent grads Matteo Roman ’25, Posey Whidden ’25, Robert (Max) Freedman ’24, and Brynn Conrad ’24.
“It was particularly enriching for our students to connect with recent alums, who are either working at the National Institutes of Health or are in graduate school, and another (Drennan) who is a highly regarded and established researcher,” Aitken said. The dinner was arranged by Sharon Parkinson, Vassar’s Director of Multicultural and Affinity Engagement.
Nguyen said she was grateful for the opportunity to attend a national conference as an undergraduate researcher and an international student in STEM, particularly given the current uncertainty of scientific funding. “Vassar's commitment to supporting students of all backgrounds has made experiences like this possible,” she said.
"I attribute my scientific achievements to Vassar—from this poster prize to [getting into] graduate school,” she said. Nguyen will be pursuing her PhD in Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology starting this fall.
Registration and travel costs for the students who attended the conference were covered by Vassar’s Asprey Center for Collaborative Approaches to Science (CCAS) Student Enhancement Research Program as well as by the June Ross Marks ’49 Travel Fund, which allow students to travel to and present at professional conferences in their disciplines.