 in the studio. My name is Preacher. It's a name out of title and today we get to talk about chemistry. Thank you, Davis Media Access for allowing us to be here. Today we are talking about an event that's happening. We'll tell you what, when and where. The UC Davis Department of Chemistry is hosting a two-day 17th annual R. Brian Miller Symposium. Now, where it's really hard for me to say, but I will say it again on Thursday and Friday, March 16th and 17th at UC Davis Conference Center of Old Davis Road. Say that three times fast. I have some really nice guests today. I'll let me introduce them to you. I have to always read this off the off the paper. First, I have Dr. Sheila Davis. She's a UC Davis chemistry professor and I have Nicole Nunez, a chemistry PhD grad student. So like what I would like to do to start first is ladies of Dr. If you always prefer when you call them doctors, like it's like something you earn. Are you just like, yeah. It depends. Yeah. Sometimes it's like or professor. Professor. Yeah. I always wondered that. Because actually professor is, you know, not everybody can be a professor. That's true. I like that answer. Multiple doctors. Professor Davis. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Davis. In fact, we talked earlier about maybe talking about research at the end. Tell us just a little bit about yourself and what you do. I'm just throwing you guys on the line right now. Tell us about what you do at Davis. Yeah, sure. So I've been a professor at UC Davis for about 10 years now. And so I teach classes. I teach classes in pharmaceutical chemistry and organic chemistry. That's what I was looking for. Yeah. A periodic table. And pharmaceutical chemistry is really just the chemistry of drugs. So it's a cool class. It's cool stuff. I also run a research group and I have grad students and undergrads that work in my lab. And we work on DNA repair. So we're interested in enzymes that are involved in DNA repair. And Nicole is actually one of my grad students. That's awesome. And Nicole, tell us about yourself. Where are you from? How do you get to Davis and what made you so motivated to be involved in the chemistry department here? Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm a California born and raised. And I actually did my undergrad at UC Davis in the molecular biology department. And then following that, I did my masters and really wanted to come back to UC Davis just because of the rich research environment, all of the resources they offer, the outreach potential that the school is well known for. And also UC Davis, which I think a lot of people probably know in the stories, voted one of the number one school in terms of promoting women to pursue STEM fields. And so for me it was like a lot of desire to go to a school that fosters so much support for their students. And in particular, when I was looking at which research labs I wanted to join, I was particularly drawn to Sheila's lab, Professor Sheila David's lab because of the research that she does in DNA repair. And in particular, I was really drawn to her research because one of the enzymes that we study actually is it's been shown that if you inherit defective forms of this protein, you have a higher chance of developing a particular type of colon cancer known as mutewite associated polyposis. And many individuals are affected by this disease. And we actively do research that can help doctors and patients understand the consequences of these inherited defects of the protein. And so it's been very rewarding for me as a student to be able to not just do research and learn the techniques, but to have so much value in what our research does for society. So it's great. All right, something just hit me like all of a sudden I am like the dumbest person on it. But that's very interesting work. And you got ladies are very, oh, that's important stuff that's going on right here. Well, a lot of people don't realize like, you know, how chemistry just touches on so many different things. And so you wouldn't realize that you have a certain view of chemistry as just like test tubes and numbers and like things. And you got what you're doing is actually great work. You know, it's pretty actually amazing. You just like blew my mind away. I'm just what you're saying right now. And I'm like, I thought we talked about chemistry. Yeah, no, our research directly impacts cancer and medicine and that's awesome. Actually, Nichols has a personal cancer story. I don't know if she wants to share it. Yeah. And that's the thing too is, you know, I've had, you know, I did lose my mom to colorectal cancer. And I know that there's a lot of people out there that who have been afflicted by disease. And you know, whether it's cancer or neurological like Alzheimer's or it could be something like a genetic disorder that you're born with. And I feel that that by pursuing stuff science and especially like in our chemistry department, it does this is one of the ways that we can help study these disease and help all those people that are affected by those diseases. I will tell you this and we'll get to why you guys are here. Once again, thanks for being here at Davis Media Center. But I am a cancer survivor. So I believe that as well. That's another story for another day. Yeah, we'd love to hear. Six years, you know, when they get past five and they're all good. You're good. So we are here for a good reason. Let's not bring it down. Then we'll all start crying. What is the Miller Symposium ladies, whichever one you want to start. That's why we're here today. What's the Miller Symposium? If you guys want to give us a brief or detail, you know, whatever you want to say, I'm really struggling. I never I've used the word symposium. I don't know that's how you spell it. So what's the Miller Symposium? Well, so the Miller Symposium is this big two day celebration that we have in the chemistry department. We it focuses on the areas of pharmaceutical chemistry and chemical biology. And we bring in speakers from around from around the US and around the world really that are from industry and in academics that are focused on are you speaking? No, not this year. I actually spoke two years ago. So we do have one of our own faculty speaking, but most of the speakers are we have many people from companies. So we have a professor or not a professor. He's a doctor from from Merck. We have somebody from Genentech coming. We also have the local based pharmaceuticals. And then we also have a young up and coming star from Harvard. So we have a lot of different speakers who are coming that are going to focus on these topics related to this is open to the public. So yeah, anyone can attend. Correct? Yeah, you have to register. And then why is the Miller Symposium so beneficial to students? Do you want to both I'll start with you and then you can piggyback if you would like. Yeah, sure. So one of as a graduate student and this is also open to undergraduate students or even if there's high school students that are interested in the area who might want to see like what kind of research our department and is going on in the field of chemistry and chemical biology. So the in terms of the Miller Symposium one of the most beneficial events that happens at the Symposium besides all the great talks that we have is the poster session and that's actually sponsored by the American Chemical Society the Sacramento chapter. And this poster session I've participated in a couple years now and it's a great way that students are able to get feedback on their research, learn about other research topics that are happening in the department and all this active work that is looking at targeting all of these different types of disease pathways and trying to understand how either ways we can pursue cures or try to just understand the disease. So for a graduate student it's great to have this very almost informal networking event where I can talk to graduate students about their research. I can have professors come talk to me and give me feedback about mine. So in addition to that we also get there's also chances to get research awards for either your poster presentation, there's scholarships that are offered. In particular we have the Francesca Miller undergraduate research award that goes to an undergraduate who was who has shown excellence in research and actually she was a previous undergraduate researcher won an award a couple years ago so that was exciting for our lab and yeah and we also that undergrad is now she's she was working at Novartis a company in the Bay in Boston and now she's going to be going to medical school so she's like so yeah yeah that's all for you yeah so I like to I kind of you know I won't lie some of the things you guys say are a little over my head you know but I'm intrigued and so I would like to maybe just talk briefly on why the educational aspect is important for the people to come and then maybe why the layman's person like myself who's just a poly-side major it would be important and then we'll just kind of go from there and then we'll once again say where it is and the dates and all that good stuff so so why should I as an academia our person come and I'll let the doctor or professor maybe uh yeah well definitely the people that we've chosen to speak are you know the leaders in their fields and they're doing really the cutting-edge research and you know learning about drug development and as well as potential cures that's really exciting and just networking with these people and getting their ideas so for for scientists for the students it's a great opportunity to really just you know see what's out there and to see how people think about science and to learn new things for you know for the lay person you know they might not get everything but I think they might learn something and also just maybe to appreciate like how you know how complicated and just all the various facets of chemistry there are and that how it all comes together to solve sort of big problems um and that it you know takes these small steps and just to learn about you both are gonna be there yeah and there's also yeah oh totally and like definitely you know in terms for the lay person like you know one thing that I mean we've I think we've all noticed recently you know in terms of the media and uh you know we've heard a lot of different like conflicting views on important topics like you know climate change and and I feel like attending conferences like this if the public um pursues avenues of of of rich knowledge like this they're able to get the information from the source from the researchers who are in the fields doing the work and they they'll tell you this is what my findings are they don't put it there the the researchers don't want to you can make decisions on exactly you know our job is not to put a spin on it or to sell you know I have a certain type of opinion I love yeah we just want to present our results to you clearly and then as the public you can make your decision about how do you feel about these topics and I love that because not only can you make it your opinions you can make a educated opinion yes not not based on you know motives or whatever facebook so tell us so I'll I'll once again mention real quick uh you can register at the conference uh you see davis dot edu slash miller and I want to go ahead and say that real again is that the only place or do we have another place that you can uh that's the me yeah best place if you wanted to get some more information is there another place that you guys could go to or is this yeah the chemistry website would also be good I think if you go to the chemistry website and look under um seminars the seminar tab you see davis chemistry website you look under the seminar so once again I'm going to say that real slow because a lot of times people talk fast and we don't know where we're going is ucdavis dot edu slash miller let's once again tell you uh it's the uc davis department of chemistry is it's the 17th annual our brian miller symposium I did not mess up on that word today and it's on Thursday and Friday March 16th and the 17th at the uc davis conference sitter off of old davis road is that close to here where's old davis road is that near the university yeah my guest today is doctor shila david uc davis chemistry professor you have something else or if someone want to get in contact you do you go to uc davis yeah if you go to the our website you can there's a list of faculty so you can find my email if uh okay and once again thank you and once again thank you polo nunia as I had to do you know not any yeah she's a chemistry PhD grad student you know and I like I love uh you ladies passion for this thing and then before we go good if there's anything else that you would just maybe like to share with our audience and share with the program about you know anything it could be a personal experience and why this is just important for the community then that will be appreciated I mean this is one of the things that I one of my favorite events that we have every year and I think it's a great event to celebrate chemistry and all the good things about chemistry and all the the hard work and good things that people are trying to do so um you know love to have people come I can tell you guys like this too you seem like excited good things too sometimes we have um we have some people that will be serving some wine but you have to be you know during the poster session yeah so once again I would like to thank my guest for coming here this is in the studio once again davis media access I'd like to thank these two ladies for being here today this is in the studio once again my name is preacher thanks for letting us talk to you and inform you about the events and what's going on in local and media access thanks again guys