By Whitney Harder

(April 1, 2015) — The Southeast Enzyme Conference, also referred to as the SEC, provides a unique opportunity for scientific exchange among faculty, students and researchers working at the forefront of enzymology. This year, the conference is being led by Anne-Frances Miller, professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Chemistry and director of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility.

A one-day event, the SEC will be held Saturday, April 11, at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference will feature eight talks by junior faculty, post-doctoral scholars, and graduate and undergraduate students selected by Miller from submitted abstracts.

The conference will include two intervals for viewing posters to provide a greater opportunity for discussion and collaborative interactions, and a keynote presentation by J. Martin Bollinger of Penn State University will conclude the event.

"It is a uniquely high-quality meeting that is nonetheless small enough to allow individuals to speak at length with the people who actually did the work," said Miller, the 2015 SEC program chair. "We learn about the details that enable the experiments, and the insights being hatched, in real-time. The science comes alive."

Miller notes that in addition to the opportunity to learn from experts in enzymology, the conference is a great chance for undergraduates to speak with graduate students about graduate school, in order to make informed decisions. Moreover, this year the meeting organizers will waive the registration fee for the first 25 UK undergraduates to register, thanks to generous support from sponsors.

If interested, UK undergraduates can visit http://sec.gsu.edu/undergraduates/ to register.

To learn more about the Southeast Enzyme Conference, visit http://sec.gsu.edu/.