2025 Peggy Cotter Awardee: Michael Norris
Dear Hawaiʻi ASM Members,
The Peggy Cotter Travel Award for early career investigators helped me attend the world’s premier microbiology conference, ASM Microbe 2025. As a Graduate Student I had the honor of collaborating with Dr. Peggy Cotter when she was part of the Pacific Southwest Regional Center of Excellence, so I was honored to be a recipient of her namesake travel award.
ASM Microbe is a richly diverse meeting where the breadth of current microbiology research is on full display. Attending this meeting is a great way to meet current and future collaborators, inspire new ideas, and see the direction research is moving. For me, it really helped visualize the governance of the American Society of Microbiology which is a large national organization that contributes to the scientific and political narrative surrounding science in the US and the world. While attending the Branch Officers forum we met with other regional ASM Branches and I was able to see that our Hawaii Branch excels at interacting with our Student Chapter, due mostly in part to strong leadership in our Student Chapter. It was inspiring to see that as an incoming Branch Office. I hope we can continue the level of student engagement at HiASM into the future and show off our impressive student chapter at the next ASM Microbe.
Another really valuable part of attending meetings like ASM Microbe are the interactions with scientists and funding agency representatives. This can be important due to the geographic isolation of the Hawaiian Islands. Sharing your work with a diverse group of scientists can ignite new ideas, produce new collaborations, and attract interest to you work. Of note, I met government scientists from the Republic of Korea and spent a long time discussing my poster with them. I’m hopeful this can turn into an international collaboration. I also met with scientists in the US government to understand funding opportunities going forward in the current austere funding environment. Building these types of relationships are vital to maintaining a research program, especially for early-stage investigators. I also met with friends I had not seen in a long time and got to catch up on the status of their research programs and various academic pursuits. Last but not least, ASM Microbe provides a forum for learning about cutting-edge science. The meeting also highlighted the ever-growing role of computation in the biological sciences. This included the use of artificial intelligence to mine extinct organism genomes for therapeutic proteins. Resurrecting functional cryptic antimicrobial peptides from the genomes of Neanderthals and wooly mammoths is truly extraordinary. Another application is using artificial intelligence to predict the next mutations in viral pathogens, keeping effective vaccines one step ahead of disease.
All told, the meeting was an enjoyable and extraordinarily productive event. I am grateful to the Branch officers for selecting me as one of the awardees representing the Hawaiʻi Branch of the American Society for Microbiology. I encourage scientists in Hawaiʻi to take advantage of the program and apply for the Peggy Cotter Travel Award. Attending ASM Microbe is immensely beneficial for professional growth, especially so for those early in their career. I extend a big mahalo to the Hawaiʻi Branch of ASM for the assistance in attending ASM Microbe 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Warm Regards,
Michael Norris, PhD
