SCDB Meeting:Innovations in Development University of California SC August 08-11, 2012

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

Scientific conferences serve a vital role in the exchange of new ideas and results among scientists funded by the NSF and by other national and international sources. Because the success of scientific research builds increasingly on very recent technical advances and findings, such exchanges serve to accelerate important research, increasing the return on research funding. This proposal will fund a national conference for developmental biologists, the 2012 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting, centered this year on the theme of Innovations in Developmental Biology. This biennial conference is one of the two major conferences in the field of developmental biology. The 2012 conference, organized by Bob Goldstein, Amander Clark and John Tamkun, will be held August 8-11 on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus. There will be approximately 160 participants, including 28 invited speakers and keynote lectures on recent advances from a Nobel Laureate and two other scientists at the forefront of the field. Each speaker will present results from his/her laboratory's recent research, and workshops will be held on career development issues. Broader impacts from the conference will include the education and training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who will become the educators, academic scientists and industry scientists of the future. Invited speakers were selected by the organizers based primarily on their contributions to the field and hence the likelihood that they would contribute significantly to exchanges that will advance the field, and secondarily balancing career stage, geography, gender, age, race, and experimental approaches, to help ensure broad exposure to a variety of novel contributions as well as valuable role models for the career development of young scientists. At the conclusion of the conference, results presented will be disseminated widely through publication in scientific journals.