RI-INBRE 2024 Summer Picnic and Faculty Retreat

RI-INBRE held its annual SURF Summer Picnic and Investigator Retreat on June 28, 2024, at URI. The picnic is one of the highlights of the summer program, as it assembles summer research students and their faculty mentors from across RI. 

Aside from a delicious meal, the picnic provides summer students with multiple professional development activities related to research. Dr. Brenton DeBoef, Dean of URI Graduate School, gave a morning presentation entitled Tips & Strategies for Applying to Graduate School. Dr. Seann Mulcahy, Professor of Chemistry at Providence College, and Dr. Jyothi Menon, Associate Professor of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at URI, each gave a keynote highlighting their training and paths to becoming faculty investigators. Finally, Dr. DeBoef led a poster design workshop.

A critical change to investigator programming is that we will now hold only one annual faculty retreat on the day of the summer picnic instead of keeping both a summer and winter retreat. The 2024 Annual Retreat included program updates by Dr. Bongsup Cho, Program Director, and Dr. Brett Pellock, Program Coordinator that focused on new funding mechanisms for the 2024-2029 RI-INBRE funding period. The highlight of the retreat was four-minute lightning talks by nine newly funded investigators and three Teaching Postdoctoral Fellows, followed by a lively informal networking session. Holding the retreat earlier in the summer and allowing new investigators to present their work was well-received. Future Annual Retreats will continue to focus on introducing new awardees and promoting meaningful networking conversations.