The 2019 North East Regional IDeA Conference (NERIC) hosted by the New Hampshire IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) and Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) gathered August 14-16 at the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Attendees included more than 300 students, faculty, scientists and administrators from Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The group was welcomed by Dartmouth College Vice Provost for Research, Dean Madden, and Principal Investigator of the New Hampshire INBRE, Bill Green, during a reception the evening of August 14th. Sessions on August 15th and 16th included presentations by five faculty and staff from the Department of Epidemiology and COBRE-funded Center for Molecular Epidemiology. Talks on their recent work were delivered by Saeed Hassanpour, Histopathological Characterization of Whole-Slide Images Through Deep Learning; Annie Hoen, Multi-Omic Analysis of the Gut Microbiota During Normal Development: Results from the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study; and, Lynn Foster-Johnson and Thomas Palys, Program Evaluation: Strategic Planning. Brock Christensen, who also co-chaired the conference session on Cancer, presented his research, Accurate Immune Phenotyping and Tumor Cytometry using DNA Methylation.
In addition, twelve students, postdocs and staff of the Department of Epidemiology and Center for Molecular Epidemiology presented their research during poster sessions the evenings of the 14th and 15th. Behnaz Abdollahi presented “Deep Learning for Classification of Colorectal Polyps on Histopathology Slides”; Kathryn Crawford presented “Predictors of Breastfeeding Duration in the New Hampshire Birth Cohort Study” Hannah Laue presented “Infant Toenail Metal Concentrations Associated with Gut Microbial Diversity and Specific Taxa Abundance”; Rebecca Lebeaux presented “Intrapartum Antibiotic Use and Antibiotic Resistance in the Developing Infant Gut Microbiome”; Reno Leeming presented “Bladder Cancer Susceptibility Polymorphisms and Mortality from Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer”; Quang Nguyen presented “Predictive Metabolomic Profiling of Microbial Communities from Taxonomic Abundance Using Machine Learning Models”; Thomas Palys presented “The COBRE Center of Molecular Biorepository Core at Dartmouth: Comprehensive Support for Large Scale, Integrated Multidimensional “Omics” Research”; Devin Parker presented “Evaluating the Utility of Biomarkers to Improve Predication of One-Year Readmission or Mortality after Pediatric Congenital Heart Surgery”; Iben Rickett presented “Consumer Data and Risk Stratification for Coronary Heart Disease”; Qingyuan Song presented “A Machine Learning Approach for Long-Term Prognosis of Bladder Cancer Based on Clinical and Molecular Features”; Kwame Wiredu presented “Serologic Analysis of Human Papillomavirus – 16 and Bladder Cancer Incidence in a Population-Based Case-Control Study”; and, Ronnie Zipkin presented “Influence of physician peer network properties on the diffusion of a novel cancer technology.”