Gordon Research Conference on the Chemical Senses

Gordon Research Conferences, East Greenwich RI

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Funds are requested to assist in support of the 2003 Gordon Research Conference on the Chemical Senses to be held from July 6-July 11, 2003 at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire. Financial support from NIH will be used to partially defray travel costs and conference fees incurred by the invited speakers, discussants, and session chairs. In addition, conference fees are requested for new investigators (graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) with preference for minority applicants. The meeting will consist of a keynote lecture, followed by 8 focused sessions. The 2003 conference will address how concepts of systems-level processing have been transformed by emerging advances driven by new molecular and neurophysiological techniques. Each chosen topic is undergoing rapid theoretical and technological growth. The speakers and discussion leaders are established and emerging leaders in the chemical senses, and comparable individuals from related fields whose findings can provide fresh insights for workers in taste and smell. The Gordon Conference on the Chemical Senses has features with unique benefits not available in the regularly-scheduled meetings in our field. The limited scope and attendance allows participants to explore intensively a specific area. The Gordon Conference format also encourages attendance of all the participants at all of the sessions, and gives equal weight to discussion and formal presentation. The major regularly-scheduled meeting in our field, the annual meeting of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, has the complementary advantage of covering a wider scope, but it has grown to include approximately 650 attendees and 400 presentations. This does not allow adequate time for discussion and for critical comparisons among people working in different subspecialties. The Gordon Conference format strongly promotes much needed interactions between the naturally-allied areas of taste and smell, as well as other areas of neuroscience. The cumulative influence of recent findings at the molecular and cellular level are beginning to make notable inroads into concepts of how the chemical senses function as integrated systems. The goal of the 2003 Gordon Conference on the Chemical Senses is to vigorously discuss those new, sometimes controversial ideas and to stimulate further, yet more novel hypotheses.