YouTube Transcript
The goal of the NextGen Stem Cell conference is to have an environment – a stem cell scientific environment – that’s very casual, that’s very light. One of the speakers that was just up a few minutes ago described it almost more as a meeting of friends. You know, at the the bigger meetings he may be shaking hands and talk a little bit – at a poster of it here you have a lot of very deep interactions I think with these people. You really get to know them in the science world these days. It’s kind of difficult to make a name for yourself when you’re just starting out, mainly because you don’t have as large of a repertoire of studies to really reference and set yourself apart as being a well-known scientist, and so many of the people who are already at that stage are the ones to get invited to go to all these conferences. Many scientists from different specializations of stem cell research can come together in this open forum for discussion.
There are so many different cell types that we need to consider now when we’re modeling diseases with induced pluripotent stem cells, and I think it’s great to be able to utilize this as a resource to find out what other people are doing or what they’ve tried and and kind of figuring out what’s the best direction to go in. If you have questions, you will ask them – whether it’s right in front of the audience or when we have a break out at the bar or something like that. The benefits of meeting with young scientists is that we have more of an opportunity to come up with maybe more innovative or kind of out-of-the-box ideas and it’s just a very comfortable environment. I think it’s good to always look at things from new perspectives and so I think it’s, you know, way to kind of build that foundation and help support those people that are just starting their labs, too, because I think I think that’s a really difficult time to kind of make your name once you’re starting out all on your own and don’t have the support of a big lab anymore.
The format’s very nice in that there’s breaks in between several lectures so no one gets super tired. I think it flows really well for that reason. We’re really thankful that the meeting can be held here in saratoga springs, new york at the saratoga national golf club. It’s’s a really, really beautiful setting saratoga itself the city’s is awesome especially in the spring summer time you really get to interact with a lot of people sometimes at those larger conferences with especially with the speaker if you don’t really get as much of a chance to be able to talk to them more once their presentations over and it feels more like a community that’s building out of this I think it’s going to produce a lot more collaborations at the end of the day because of that because of the small atmosphere and really getting to interact over the couple of days.