I and my lab (Matt/Shahaf/Vivek/Saad) participated at the very first EvoDevo Pan American meeting (attended by more than 300 participants around the world – but majority from US and Latin America). see – http://www.evodevopanam.org. What an incredible meeting. I made many many new friends; people who do amazing biology and connect with big questions in evolutionary and developmental biology; and still have a naturalist hat on. What an amazing group..

I also got a chance to show Foldscope in action; and I was thrilled to meet many passionate folks who care about bringing the microscopic world to everyone. Here are a few shots I found randomly on my phone. We had a great time sampling some of the fly larvae at the poster grounds of the meeting. I also images my first fish embryo developing (stickleback fish none the less); which Croat millers students happily brought to the lunch table. While I finished my lunch; the first cell divided right on our lunch table (I will be posting these and all my adventures from Mexcio soon).

Above is Aaron Hardin (postdoc at UCSF; former Mike Eisen grad student) Twitter – @aihardin teaching me how to find drosophila larvae (almost anywhere). We got some fantastic larval feeding footage and the onus was a drosophila egg (watch for Aaron’s post – he has got an outdoors eye 🙂 )

Also; had a lovely chat with Dr Collins (Smithsonian – Baocas Del Toro) – would be great to make Smithsonian the hub for a lot of activity in Latin America.

Also met Dorit Hockman from Oxford; who is planning activities in Capetown, Douth Africa.

Finally; it was absolutely amazing to meet the EvoDevo Latin American fellows; who all have packets of Foldscope (I wish we had taken a group picture). I welcome you all to the Foldscope community; let’s bring our passion for the microscopic and share it with the world around – to the unsuspecting eyes who are missing out on the microscopic. If we all pass on our passion to just one single person – that would immediately double our community.

Finally – just wanted to say; what an Amazing group and what an amazing meeting. Hats off to Nipam Patel and Chris Lowe and everyone who put immeasurable hours to pull the meeting off. Scientific communities are crucial to science – and this was a great example of how people come together to think about big questions haunting all of us in biology.

Keep on exploring.

Cheers

Manu

Ps: @Laks and @Aarvind – you would have liked this meeting.