Our 2026 annual retreat will be held on October 16-18 at the Stanford Sierra Conference Center, Fallen Leaf Lake, Tahoe. Registration opens in September, 2026.
2025 Annual Retreat
The 2025 eMCDB T32 annual retreat was held October 24-26 at the Stanford Sierra Conference Center, Fallen Leaf Lake, Tahoe. Dr. Dinesh-Kumar, NASM, Professor in the Department of Plant Biology at UC Davis, gave the keynote talk on Friday. The talk included a discussion of the speaker’s unconventional education and career path, as well as his current research in plant immunity. The second keynote address was delivered on Saturday evening by a panel of UC Davis PhD graduates and former MCBT32 trainees, Dr. Danielle Mandikian, Senior Principal Scientist at Genentech, Dr. Brandon Zipp, CEO of Placer Biosciences, and Dr. Yoong Wearn Lim, Director of Bioinformatics at GigaGen, Inc. Drs Mandikian, Zipp and Lim discussed their career trajectories and scientific journeys, experience with advancing their careers and changing career paths, as well as their scientific projects. The retreat was attended by 32 Program Trainees and Senior Trainees, 34 first-year graduate students, 4 students from the NIH-funded PREP Program, as well as graduate students, postdocs and scientists from trainer laboratories.
All 16 currently funded trainees gave oral presentations at the retreat. We included a real-time Qualtrics based evaluation link in the scientific program to enable participants to provide anonymous feedback on each of the Trainee talks. 15 attendees presented posters, among them graduate students, NIH MARC-funded undergraduate students, one Trainer and two junior faculty members.
To engage first-year graduate students attending the retreat, several topics relevant to first year graduate students were discussed at five Saturday lunch topic tables, with discussions led by faculty trainers. First-year graduate students participated enthusiastically in this activity.
The 2026 Annual Retreat will be held on October 16-18; registration will open in early September of 2026.