Well, I had never been to an algae conference before but going to the opening night of the 1st International Conference on Algal Biomass, Biofuels, and Bioproducts did not disappoint. Tonight was the first “poster session” where the first set of various attending scientists and researchers could hang a poster of their work for their peers to see. Some researchers opted to stand by their poster and answer questions while others chose to mingle with the other attendees and and enjoy two free drinks compliments of the conference’s sponsors.

Walking around the conference room, I ran into one of the conference organizers from Elsevier. Talking with him I discovered that this conference was already a bigger hit than they had thought it would be. They had allotted room for 250 attendees but over 400 had tried to sign up. Elsevier was able to raise the cap to 300 attendees but the physical space of the conference room (and the fire marshal) would not allow any more. Plans for the 2nd International Conference next year are already in the works with the attendee cap much higher.

This poster session focused on algal biology and ranged from the seemingly straightforward (“Microalgae from beer wastewater”) to the very specific (“A tale of three races: Unraveling the molecular biology of botryococcus braunii”). However, once you read further on the posters, you learn could tell that many hours of research went into it. This poster session definitely proved that this would be a conference for scientists and their discoveries, with every claim backed up by hours of research. A change from conferences that are business oriented where claims often cannot be substantiated because of proprietary information.

Nevertheless, tomorrow is when all the fun really starts, with presentations from Dr. Richard Sayre of the Danforth Center and Dr. Ben-Amotz of Seambiotic. These heavy hitters will be followed by many other notable scientists who will present their research to the entire conference. Be sure to check back then for more coverage.

Tags: conference