BPS2026 Program Book

Career Development Center Workshop Asking for More: Negotiating your Industry Job Offer 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, Esplanade, Room 151 After attending this seminar you will know how to answer these com mon questions that every scientist has as they are getting their first industry job offer. --What do I say when the employer asks “What salary do you expect?” during an interview? --What kinds of benefits and compensation components will I see in my industry job offer letter? --Which job offer components are negotiable and which ones should I not try to negotiate? Most importantly, HOW do I ask for more graciously, so that I get what I need while maintaining a positive relationship with my future em ployer? Training Undergraduates in the Research Laboratory 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm, Esplanade, Room 153 Get guidance on founding, establishing, and maintaining a research laboratory at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. Panelists are faculty members at PUI’s who have been successful in their positions and will share their experiences and answer your questions. Moderators Hannah Malcolm, University of North Florida, USA Andrew Feig, Research Corporation for Science Advancement, USA Speakers Ashley Carter, Amherst College, USA Careers Beyond the Bench: Have you started thinking about your next career step? Are you won dering if you can apply your academic skills in industry? Or what skills outside of academia you may bring to the lab? Join us to explore career options in consulting, industry, and academia. Panelists with science backgrounds, now involved in a wide variety of careers, will share their personal experiences and answer questions from the audience. Moderators Surl-Hee Ahn, University of California, Davis, USA Tugba Ozturk, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA Speakers Jin Qian, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA Soojin Kim, Genentech, USA Olive Burata, Nanion Technologies, USA The Biophysicist Editorial Board Meeting 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm, Room 312 Moving to a World Outside the Lab 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm, Esplanade, Room 155

Exhibitor Presentation Nicoya Lifesciences 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm, Esplanade, Room 157 Inside NIH: Explore Biophysics Grant Opportunities in Key Institutes 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm, Esplanade, Room 154 The National Institutes of Health (NIH), with its 27 Institutes and Centers, can cause researchers moments of pause as they navigate where their research is best applied. While each Institute and Center has its own distinct focus of research, there is a considerable amount of overlap and coordination that does occur – particularly in biophys ics research. Join the Public Affairs Committee for a panel session with Program Directors from the National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute on General Medical Science (NIGMS). Panelists George Umanah, NINDS, NIH, USA Eric Johnson, NCI, NIH, USA Veronica Taylor, NIGMS, NIH, USA NSF-NCEMS Intermediate Hands-On Training Data Science Tools for Confidence, Complexity, and LLMs in Biophysical Research 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm, Esplanade, Room 156 Ready to deepen your data science skills and tackle more complex biological datasets? This intermediate-level training, presented by the NSF National Center for Emergence in Molecular and Cellular Sci ences (NCEMS), builds on our popular beginner session and introduces three powerful techniques to help biophysicists make sense of messy, ambiguous, or incomplete data. You will learn how to apply bootstrap ping to calculate confidence intervals without relying on assumptions of normality, ideal for biological data that defy textbook statistics. Next, we’ll explore how to use encoder-decoder methods to perform batch correction for transcriptomics data to generate harmonized, analysis ready embeddings. Finally, you’ll get hands-on experience using natural language processing with pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) to extract key metadata from text, a critical step in managing and integrat ing large public datasets. Through live Jupyter notebook exercises and guided interpretations, you’ll see how these methods can boost the rigor, sensitivity, and reproducibility of your analyses. The session is de signed for biophysicists with some prior exposure to basic data science or machine learning; our beginner session is a great place to start! Trainers Maowei Dong, Pennsylvania State University (NCEMS), USA Alexis Morrissey, Pennsylvania State University (NCEMS), USA Daniel Nissley, Pennsylvania State University (NCEMS), USA Ian Sitarik, Pennsylvania State University (NCEMS), USA Snack Break 1:45 pm - 3:00 pm, Exhibit Halls ABC Poster Presentations and Late Posters 1:45 pm - 3:45 pm, Exhibit Halls ABC

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Career Development Center Workshop Career Planning in Entrepreneurship 1:15 pm - 2:15 pm, Esplanade, Room 151

Just like there are many ways to start a start-up, there are many ways to launch a career in entrepreneurship. In this session, you will learn about the many different routes you can take to create a meaningful career in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and you will gain insights, tactics, and strategies to enable your success in uncovering and landing these roles, even in a time of challenge. Discover all the professional opportunities to contribute to this space, and how you can prepare for them with triumph!

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