I recently attended the Posters on the Hill conference in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). CUR is an organization in DC that lobbies Congress in order to secure federal monies for undergraduate research.

The conference began at noon on Tuesday, April 29, with an optional field trip to: the Folger Shakespeare Library, the world's best archive of Shakespearean works; the World Bank, an important global financial center; and the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health. I elected to go on the NIH trip. After a brief orientation where NIH personnel explained the function and opportunities for research at NIH laboratories, we were led across the grounds by some of the NIH graduate students.

My tour guide was Samuel Day '04, a UBRP and BRAVO! alum (biochemistry major) from UA, who just spent two years at Cambridge on the NIH Ox-Cam program, where students do their graduate coursework at either Cambridge or Oxford and return to NIH to complete their doctoral research. As he showed me through the magnetic imaging unit, I was flabbergasted by the resources that they had. One hallway had four large magnets, rated at 11, 7, 7, and 5 Tesla. What amazed me more was that NIH had another eight magnets like this! The resources to conduct biomedical research at NIH were impressive, and I would recommend anyone interested in the field to go there.

After a brief orientation at the American Chemical Society, we returned to the hotel to recharge for the big day: meetings with congressional representatives followed by the poster session. We had morning talks from Vernon Ehlers from Michigan (who happens to have a PhD in nuclear physics) and from John Marburger, Science Advisor to President Bush. Afterwards, I had meetings scheduled with staffers from the offices of both Arizona senators as well as staffers from the offices of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Congressman Raúl Grijalva. Both the representatives met with me personally and were very interested in my work and in undergraduate research in general. Senator McCain was on the campaign trail, but his staffer, like Giffords and Grijalva, listened intently to my work and my case for funding undergraduate research. Senator Kyl's office didn't show much interest in my work.

After the meetings, it was off to the poster session. While looking at other students' posters, I noticed that CUR not only sponsors science disciplines like biochemistry and physics, but social sciences as well -- there were several presentations on topics related to anthropology, history, and urban development. I also noticed that students who attend Tier I research schools were in the minority: of the sixty posters accepted to the conference, only four were from big research schools! Next was the three-hour poster session open to anybody associated with Congress. I presented for people from various DC organizations, including NSF and NIH.

The conference opened my eyes to some issues involving science and politics. Scientists and budding scientists funded through federal grants should not take that money for granted; there is intense competition in Washington for a shrinking pool of money that is siphoned away to deal with problems in the economy and problems in Iraq - in fact, according to Grijalva, Iraq costs American taxpayers $50,000 a second! Those of us at UA are fortunate that our representatives are good allies to undergraduate research, and research in general, but securing the money to do that research requires constant reminders to our politicians. Finally, Congress has a notable shortage of science specialties, having only three members with PhDs in science. It is unfortunate that Congress should be required to legislate on scientific issues when it lacks scientific expertise. For that reason, there are plenty of opportunities for students in science to participate in government.

In summary, CUR was fast, intense, and exciting. I hope that more UA students apply to this conference in the future.

Kevin's work is funded in part by a grant from NIH (GM072733)

Kevin Keys, URBPer in Dr. Michael Hammer's lab, Genomic Analysis and Technology Core, ARL-Biotechnology