Hello all, We are excited to announce that the 26th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Student Chapter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (NWSSMM) will take place this spring on May 6, 2023, hosted by the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University (OSU). This will be a hybrid conference held at the Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building in Newport, OR with a zoom attendance option. We are looking forward to hosting an in-person NWSSMM meeting again! We would like to invite all graduate and undergraduate students in the Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Washington, Alaska, Yukon, Oregon, Northern California, and Idaho) doing research on marine mammals to present their work at this conference. The purpose of the meeting is to gather students in a relaxed atmosphere to share their research and practice presenting it in a low-stakes, less formal situation. We also see this as an opportunity to meet other undergraduate and graduate students in the region. PI’s and other professionals involved in student led research projects are welcome to attend, but cannot present. There will be oral presentations with two presentation styles: long form oral presentations (12 minutes) and shorter lightning talks (3 minutes), as well as a poster session. The poster session will take place in-person; any virtual presenters who have a poster will be assigned to a lightning talk session so they can receive real-time feedback from both virtual and in-person attendees. We are encouraging students that are in the early stages of their projects to present a poster, and researchers with results to give an oral presentation. Please indicate your method of presentation preference on the registration form and we will do our best to accommodate everyone’s wishes. We will kick off the conference with a keynote presentation given by our institute’s director, Lisa Ballance. We will also be holding a “career conversation bingo” event, similar to what was held at SMM Conference in Barcelona just a few years ago. We are hoping this event will provide attendees a fun opportunity to engage and network with other students and professionals. There is no registration fee for attending the conference. Abstract submission for the NWSSMM conference is due Friday, April 7th 2023. All attendees planning on attending in-person must register by April 14th, 2023. Virtual attendees can register for the event until May 4th, 2023. If you initially register to attend in-person, but need to change to virtual, please let us know ASAP. We will be providing coffee/tea, light snacks, lunch, and a conference swag item for in-person guests and need to provide our vendors appropriate estimates in a timely manner. All registrants will receive information on how to attend the conference using the email that was used for the registration at a later date. Presentations will not be recorded. Registration and abstract submissions will be done via Google forms (link below). If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us: Michaela Kratofil <michaela.kratofil@oregonstate.edu> and/or Clara Bird <clara.bird@oregonstate.edu> Thanks so much, and we look forward to meeting everyone virtually and hearing about your research! Registration and abstract submission link: https://bit.ly/NWSSMM23 NWSSMM webpage: https://sites.google.com/uw.edu/nwssmm/home Best regards, Kyra Bankhead, Michaela Kratofil and Clara Bird <michaela.kratofil@oregonstate.edu> <clara.bird@oregonstate.edu> <kyra.bankhead@oregonstate.edu> Graduate Students | Marine Mammal Institute Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, & Conservation Sciences Oregon State University https://mmi.oregonstate.edu/ [cid:f9b04abc-b97c-44b3-9bbb-eb7a34cc3fa2]