SETAC North America hosted their 45th Annual Meeting in Fort Worth Texas from October 20th – 24th with the mission to promote environmental quality through science. This meeting had over 1,500 participants, 3 plenaries, and 184 sessions as part of the scientific program highlighting “Biodiversity: It’s ‘Worth’ Saving!”
Sunday evening kicked off the meeting with an opening ceremony followed by a reception in the exhibit hall. Attendees were encouraged to interact with exhibitors and fill out a bingo card for chances to win gift cards – which a few CSETAC members won! Perhaps most exciting was the Texas Longhorn Steer posing for pictures. To our knowledge, this is the first time a cow has attended a SETAC meeting.
Texan wildlife was a theme throughout the meeting, including a plenary by videographer Ben Masters and a free showing of his documentary “Deep in the Heart: A Texas Wildlife Story,” which celebrated the unique landscapes and biodiversity in the Lone Star state. To carry on the Texas theme, SETAC hosted a private line-dancing lesson at Billy Bob’s Texas, home of the World’s Largest Honky Tonk, situated in the historic Fort Worth Stockyard District. CSETAC board member Stephanie LaPlaca (ToxStrategies) helped plan this successful meeting by serving on the program committee.
SETAC Fort Worth was well attended by CSETAC members, in part due to the support of student travel. The Dr. Pat McClellan-Green Student Travel Award supported Gabby Jones and Brittney Mitchell for both of their first national SETAC meetings.
Gabby Jones (College of Charleston) presented a poster titled “Assessing the Impact of Water Temperature on Microplastic Uptake and Depuration in the Eastern Oyster, Crassostrea virginica." Gabby is one of our current CSETAC Student Representatives.
Brittney Mitchell (Duke University) presented a poster titled “Visualization of Barnacle Plate Morphology in Response to Petroleum- and Non-Petroleum-Based Materials using Microcomputed Tomography” and included 3-D printed barnacles.
Additionally, our recent CSETAC student presentation award winners Patrick Faught and Bonnie Ertel received waived registration for the North America Annual Meeting with support from SETAC North America.
Patrick Faught (Duke University) presented a talk titled “Colloidal Fluorinated Side-Chain Polymer Nanoparticles Are a Significant Source of PFAS Contamination in Textile Wastewater.”
Bonnie Ertel (University of South Carolina- Columbia) presented a talk titled “Microplastics in Marine Mammals: A One-Health Perspective to Inform Human Health and Environmental Risk Assessment.”
CSETAC student member Nadia Barbo (EPA, ORISE) won the Best Student Presentation Award at the Master’s level for her poster presentation titled “Development of a High-Throughput Phagocytosis Assay for Testing Immunotoxicity of Environmental Chemicals.” Great job, Nadia!
We now have three CSETAC members serving on the SETAC North America Board of Directors. Katy Chung (NOAA), Michelle Harmon (University of South Carolina- Aiken), and Bonnie Ertel who is the Chair for the North America Student Advisory Council (NASAC).
CSETAC met as a regional chapter on Tuesday morning led by current past-president Pete Key (NOAA). We discussed our budget and made plans for our upcoming annual meeting in Charleston, SC on April 17th - 19th.
We look forward to seeing everyone then!
Great write up and summary of the SETAC NA meeting. So glad to know that CSETAC is so well represented in the NA SETAC Board! Congrats to all the student travel award recipients and to Nadia for her 1st place poster - I'm very proud of this group of top level scientists! Cheers!
Shea