Far-Ranging Scientific Program To Be Featured At Cell Biology Meeting

A well-rounded agenda of talks, special lectures, and awards awaits cell biologists who will be attending the 34th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), according to meeting organizers. Symposia covering such hot subjects as signal transduction, as well as newly emerging fields like programmed cell death, are all part of a farranging scientific program. From December 10 through 14, organizers expect approximately 7,000 researchers to gather in San Francisco for the 34th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. More than 2,800 presentations and posters, as well as a trade show representing more than 300 organizations are scheduled. Following are some of the special events scheduled to take place at the convention: Saturday, December 10, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: Pre conference workshop, "Connections for Excellence: Pre college Science Education for Scientists" Sunday, December 11, 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.: E.E. Just Lecture, "Actin-Dependent Movement of Organelles in the Squid Giant Axon," George M. Langford, E.E. Just Professor of Natural Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H. Monday, December 12, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.: Graduate Student Symposium, "Can Scientists Be Educators?" Monday, December 12, 6:00 to 7:15 p.m.: Women in Cell Biology presentation Tuesday, December 13, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.: 13th Keith R. Porter Lecture on Cell Biology, "Signaling Genes from the Cell Surface: The JAK-STAT Pathway," James Darnell, Vincent Astor Professor and head of the laboratory of molecular cell biology, Rockefeller University, New York For more information on the meeting, contact the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) National Office: 9650 Rockville Pike Bethesda, Md. 20814-3992 Tel: (301) 530-7153 Fax: (301) 530-7139 E-mail: ascbinfo@ascb.faseb.org J. Richard McIntosh, President Elizabeth Marincola, Executive Director The gathering will take place at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from Saturday, December 10 to Wednesday, December 14, with an estimated 7,000 researchers expected to participate. An unprecedented 2,836 presentations and posters and a trade exhibition at which more than 300 organizations will be represented are scheduled. "We've got an exciting group of speakers that will cover subjects of traditional interest to cell biologists and also some emerging areas," says Bill Wood, cochairman of the program committee and a professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "We're also proud of the number of women speakers that we have. Four out of the nine chairs of the major symposia are women." These nine major symposia cover the areas of cellular disease mechanisms and therapeutic strategies, intercellular communication, signaling in nervous-system genesis and function, molecular machinery of the secretory pathway, programmed cell death, building biological structure, cell specification and patterning during embryogenesis, biological functions of cell adhesion, and signal transduction from the cell surface to the nucleus. The meeting will kick off with a keynote address by Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Human Genome Research. Collins will discuss "Human Genetic Disorders and the Human Genome Project." Elizabeth Marincola, executive director of ASCB, notes that Collins's presentation will "combine science and public policy." The first of the nine symposia, which is to cover current approaches to gene therapy, will follow the keynote speech. This year the society will present its first ASCB Public Service Award to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). After receiving the award on Tuesday, December 13, Harkin will speak on the topic of "Biomedical Research Funding and Health-Care Reform." J. Richard McIntosh, president of ASCB and a professor of cell biology at Colorado, says Harkin has shown unusual farsightedness in championing basic biomedical research funding, as demonstrated by the Harkin-Hatfield Fund for Medical Research amendment to the health-care reform bill that he and Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) jointly proposed (see story on page 1). "When Harkin came through with the idea of a 1 percent surcharge [on health-insurance premiums, to be funneled to research], that was, of course, a remarkable breakthrough in terms of [ASCB's] perception of the way Washington was treating basic science," McIntosh declares. "It's really his courage in taking on something like that that holds promise of opening up better research for ultimately cheaper medicine in the long run. It's really hard to take that view. And that's why we are giving him the award." In general, McIntosh says, ASCB "has a significant interest in trying to make sure that Congress is fully aware of the value of basic research. A fair amount of the research that is presented at a meeting like this is funded by the NIH, and much of it also by NSF and private foundations." Traditionally among funding agencies, McIntosh points out, "there's been a strong tendency to devote research [dollars] to things that are going to be of practical importance." But, he contends, what most politicians don't understand "at a gut level" is that "science doesn't work that way very well because it's a very exploratory undertaking. "The discoveries that will turn out to be the most valuable are often unanticipatable. These are issues that right minded fiscal advisers loathe because they are the kinds of things that imply you can't plan and manage everything. Science, however, has a different culture." In addition to scientific and policy-oriented offerings, the meeting will feature several other professional sessions and services for students and investigators (see story on page 3). According to Marincola, the purpose of a special panel discussion entitled "Practice of Science: The Problem of Ambiguity," to be held on Tuesday, December 13, is to "help students understand the gray areas" of the practice of their profession and some of the difficult issues researchers must address. For example, Marincola says, "everybody's talking about conflict of interest, and the NIH is coming down hard on people who are not careful about conflicts, and yet students and young investigators--well, everybody--feels as if there are no rules. It's the kind of thing that people have to pick up intuitively, and they are picking it up in inconsistent ways." In addition to this session and a special graduate student symposium to be held on Monday, December 12, says Mary Beckerle, cochairwoman of the program committee and a professor of biology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, "we tried to get as much participation by graduate students and postdocs as possible" in the other activities at the meeting. She says that at least four out of the six speakers in each of 24 minisymposia being conducted at the meeting are students or postdocs. Students and other job-seekers can take advantage of the meeting's annual career-placement service, which will post more than 300 positions. Participants can arrange for interviews with representatives from more than 100 employers in industry, government, and aca-demia. The service is free for ASCB student members. McIntosh emphasizes yet another "terribly im-portant" feature of the meeting: the Exhibit Hall, a display of equipment and supplies from scientific firms; materials from scientific and academic publishers; and information on government and private research institutes, as well as professional societies. He describes this event as "partly a service the society can render to the private sector--a way that vendors can, with one commitment of personnel and resources, get access to a large number of potential customers. And partly it's a service to the members of the society, who need to find out what's current, what's hot, and what the best methods and equipment are."

Far-Ranging Scientific Program To Be Featured At Cell Biology Meeting

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November 1994

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