Each year the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing (CGRB) holds a fall conference where approximately 50 graduate student researchers have the opportunity to present posters on their work. This year’s conference ran from September 18-19 at the CH2M Hill Alumni Center at Oregon State University and the College of Pharmacy’s own Stephen Hyter walked away with one of the awards for the Best Poster.
Stephen is a 5th year graduate student in the College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmacology working in the lab of Dr. Arup Indra, PhD. He is also part of OSU’s prestigious Molecular & Cell Biology Program. At the conference Stephen presented his poster titled “ET-1 in skin keratinocytes controls melanocyte homeostasis and contributes to UV responses in vivo” and kept the Best Poster award in the College of Pharmacy for the third consecutive year. For the past two years, students in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry have boasted this prestigious award, but this year, thanks to Stephen, the honor goes to the Department of Pharmacology.
The CRGB fall conference features graduate student work from across the University that is reviewed by a committee of senior faculty and guest speakers. Criteria used to judge the research posters includes the quality of the hypothesis, the thoroughness of the research, the relevance of the results, and the effectiveness of the packaging of research into the visual format of a poster. Stephen’s innovative research that was featured on the 2011 Best Poster centers on understanding the ramifications of the signaling between differing cell types in skin.