Capitol Hill Event Celebrates Life Sciences Research

By: Jennifer Zeitzer
Thursday, July 26, 2018

On July 18, FASEB and the Coalition for Life Sciences hosted the first ever Celebrate Life Sciences Fair on Capitol Hill. The event offered congressional staff and the public a chance to experience cutting-edge science first-hand and learn how federal funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supports research to improve health for all Americans. Representatives Neal Dunn (R-FL), and Joe Barton (R-TX), pictured below with FASEB Executive Director, Frank Krause, and Lou Correa (D-CA) did hands-on biomedical experiments and interacted with post-docs and young investigators funded by NIH grants.

The fair was co-sponsored by several FASEB societies: the American Association of Immunologists (AAI), the American Physiological Society, and the American Society of Human Genetics. AAI provided an interactive demonstration about the immune system, pictured below, and distributed copies of the FASEB Breakthroughs in Bioscience articles on cancer immunotherapies and vaccines.

Other exhibiting organizations were the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Carnegie Science, the American Association for Cancer Research, American Society for Cell Biology, the Society for Neuroscience, the Jackson Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, and University of California, San Francisco. Displays featured the role of zebrafish, fruit flies, and other model organisms in basic research; the benefits of new technologies such as interactive sleep trackers; and advances in allergy research.