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Program Activities

Scenic Stony Brook Harbor, where our Graduate Program's Annual Fall Symposium is held in mid-September.

 

Outside the labs, Stony Brook University has many Extracurricular Activities for Graduate Students to enjoy and participate in. For fun, our Pharmacology Graduate Students have an intramural softball team. In the past, the PharmSox record was not as important as the good times! In 2009, having changed the team name to "WMD," there were more wins than losses!  Our senior students set up some seasonal events, i.e., a summer day trip to the ocean, a Fall Bowling Night, a Winter day Ski Trip, a Spring Day in New York City... there are many things to do on Long Island. Food Gatherings are an important resource for phamished pharm students!  Our Fall Orientation Days, our Annual Welcome BBQ, the Annual Lunch prior to our Fall Symposium, and the Department Holiday Party are occasions that give our graduate students opportunities to network with the great scientific minds in our department and program.

 

Students' Meetings
On the third Monday of every month a pharmacology graduate student meeting is held to provide information and get everybody together. A meeting agenda is sent out before each meeting, so that if a student cannot make it to the meeting they can stay “in the loop.” Information about registering, parking, signing rosters, fellowship opportunites and other mundane but imperative topics for the day-to-day graduate student life is brought up for discussion. Students share information with each other. Our senior students tell us about their postdoc searches, what is working, what is not working. The Graduate Program Director, Administrator, our Student Senators, Cindy Leiton, Jason Hall and Ifeanyi Obiorah, and Student Representative, Christine Ardito, all update everyone on news and events from the Faculty meetings, the Graduate Council, and the Graduate Students Organization. We also try to fit in a 20-min one-on-one meeting with a different member of our Pharm Training Faculty each month to learn more about them and their labs. In the summer months we invite visiting summer undergraduate research fellows to join in our meetings so that they can see what graduate students really talk about!.

 

Annual Program Fall Retreat

The Annual Retreat is our program's formal introduction of the incoming Fall class and new faculty to everyone in the program and the Department of Pharmacological Sciences. The retreat venue is off campus and features short talks by faculty members describing research opportunities in their labs. In addition, all students beyond the second year present posters on their research.  Two annual graduate student awards are presented each year in recognition of the significant contributions of Dr. William Van der Kloor to the development of the Department of Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University.  The Van der Kloot awards are for Excellence in Research and for Excellence in Teaching, and each recipient receives a $500 award.

 

Annual Pharmacology Students' Symposium
Our graduate students recently established an additional forum for presentations and interactions among their peers. Towards the end of May-beginning of June, the students organize their own annual symposium. Students at different years of graduate study orally present data from their research work. The student symposium takes place on campus at a a location other than the Department of Pharmacological Sciences and is attended by the graduate students and the Graduate Program director. The students invite an outside Faculty speaker, who may be alumnus of the program and who also attends the student presentations. The invited speaker gives a noon seminar that is open to the campus community. The event concludes with lunch where the graduate students and invited speaker interact and discuss the presentations and other aspects of a career in research in academia or pharmaceutical industries.

Prior to introducing our guest speaker, our program director announces the recipient of the annual David L. Williams Memorial Travel Award. Doctoral candidates in the program are nominated by their advisor for this $1,000 award to help cover expenses to participate in an advanced course (e.g., at Woods Hole, CSHL, or an EMBO course) or for presenting results of their research at either a national or international scientific meeting.  The award is given in memory of Dr. David L. Williams, one or our founding faculty members who was an advocate for enriching the graduate student experience.

 

Pharmacology Graduate Student Symposium
Invited Speakers


Speaker 2009: Dr. Herbert Schweitzer, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University. 
Speaker 2008: Dr. Gordon Fishell, Professor of Cell Biology, NYU Medical Center
Speaker 2007: Dr. James L. Salzer, Professor of Cell Biology and Neurology, NYU Medical Center
Speaker 2006: Dr. Jim Wells, Assistant Professor, Developmental Biology, Children's Hospital Research Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio
Genetics Program Alumnus '95; Advisor: Dr. Sid Strickland
Speaker 2005: Dr. Leo Pezzimenti, Professor, Biology, Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, Alabama
Pharmacology Program Alumnus '82; Advisor: Dr. J. Schmidt
Speaker 2004: Dr. Scott Hammond , Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Pharmacology Program Alumnus '99; Advisor: Dr. Andrew Morris