Elena Evans, B.S.
NICHD postbac Elena Evans won the NICHD Three-minute Talk (TmT) semi-final competition and represented our IC at the 2024 NIH-wide TmT competition on June 27 with her talk “How do mutations lead to skeletal phenotypes?” Competing against eleven other fellows across the NIH, Elena presented her work from the Section on Heritable Disorders of Bone and Extracellular Matrix under the mentorship of Scientist Emeritus Joan Marini, M.D., PhD. Elena is finishing up her postbac this summer and will begin her doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University this fall.
Each year the NICHD joins participating ICs to create a TmT program through which trainees enhance their communications skills by learning how to simplify complex information for a general scientific audience. Participants received group and individual training to develop their own short talks that distilled down the complexity of their research.
The NIH-wide contest was held virtually to accommodate NIH fellows in North Carolina, Arizona, and Montana and also featured keynote speaker, Allison Coffin, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Washington State University and President of the Association of Science Communicators. Ryleigh Griffin (NIAMS), Ivan Alcantara (NIDDK), and Dr. Yu-Ying Chen (NIEHS) placed in first, second, and third places, respectively.
The NICHD Office of Education also wishes to recognize Temidayo Adegbenro, Jarred Whitlock, Shan-Xuan Lim, Matt Siroty, Peyton Lee, Leah Pappalardo, Aurora Kraus, Emeric Louis, and Vanya Bhat for competing in the NICHD semi-final.