International C. Elegans Meetings: to be held June 29 - July 3, 2003, Los Angeles, CA; and, in 2005

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

0236887 Kim This grant is to help support travel and registration costs for about 18 students and post-doctoral fellows to attend the 2003 International C. elegans Meeting. This is the only international meeting exclusively devoted to research on C. elegans. Workers in the field regard this as the most important meeting they attend in the years in which a C. elegans meeting is held. A meeting devoted exclusively to C. elegans research can achieve many aims impossible at mixed symposia: far greater knowledge can be assumed in the audience, much more sophisticated discussion is possible, and an integrated approach to the biology of the organism can be pursued. The meeting will be at UCLA from June 29 to July 3, 2003 and will attract about 1800 participants in total. This meeting provides a forum for all researchers studying C. elegans to present and discuss results on a broad range of topics related to C. elegans biology, including: programmed cell death, functional genomics, aging, RNAi, and germ line biology. The meeting will also attract and inform researchers who are currently not using C. elegans as their primary model. The meeting will promote and showcase the research of younger scientists (graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and assistant professors) including women and minorities. At the last meeting in 2001, 99% of presentations were given by young researchers. Finally, the meeting will provide a forum for the exchange of methods, mutants and DNA clones. The meeting will have special "workshops" set aside for this goal. Funding for a second meeting in 2005 is also planned.