John Harbell, 2015 Program Chair

John Harbell, 2015 Program Chair

Welcome to the SIVB Annual Meeting, 2015. The sections have prepared an extensive program that runs a full three and a half days (Sunday through Wednesday noon) with sessions for all interests. Let me give a brief overview.

A special education training workshop will be held on Saturday afternoon “Good Teaching Is ? (convened by Vivian Dayeh, Chair of the SIVB Education Committee). This workshop is “hands on” and does require preregistration as space is limited.

The daily program for Sunday begins with the opening Plenary Symposium from 8 to 10 a.m. (early but worth it). The daily plenary symposia are intended to appeal to attendees working in all kingdoms and this broad base is one of the great strengths of the SIVB. The Sunday Plenary Symposium is “The Stem Cell State-Implications for Growth and Disease” (Michael Dame and William Gordon conveners). This session has the unique opportunity to juxtapose cutting edge insights of human stem cell and plant meristem cell biology. After to coffee break and visit to the exhibits and posters, The morning symposia are “Advances in Plant Propagation” (Wane Curtis and Jeffrey Beringer, conveners), “Genome Editing” (Qiudeng Que and Prakash Kumar, conveners) , and “Complex Tissue Structures: Insight and Applications of Human Organoid Culture” (Yan Jiang and Michael Dame, conveners). After lunch, the afternoon symposia are “Bioengineering, Microfluidics, and In Vitro Imaging” (Joshua Gasiorowski and Chunyan Wu, conveners), “Micropropagation as a Useful Tool for Addressing Global Megatrends” (Mary Welter and John Bijl, conveners), and “Mutagenesis” (Ming Cheng and Mindy Fitter, conveners). At 3:15 Opening Ceremonies begin followed by the Key Note Presentation “Engineering Gastrointestinal Cancer in Organoid Cultures”. This year, our Key Note speaker is Dr. Calvin Kuo, Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Kuo is best known for his work on the development of 3D organoid models for the study of cancer biology, gene expression, drug discovery and sensitivity profiling and homeostasis. This presentation will be of interest to all, irrespective of research focus. The Key Note Lecture will be followed by a reception and everyone is encouraged to attend! Finally, the Sunday program will end with the Student Section symposium, “Interview” (Shaimar Gonzales and Ningning Zhang, conveners). This symposium will feature two primary speakers and a panel discussion will answer questions and provide insights on approaches favored by academia, industry and government. With the current jobs market, perhaps all of us should attend.

Monday will begin with the Plenary Symposium “Epigenetic Control of Phenotypic Gene Expression” (Brad Upham and Sukhpreet Sandhu conveners). Epigenetics is the study of molecular signaling events that fine tune the heritable changes in genome expression. After the coffee break, the animal cell symposium is “Cellular Models in Toxicology and Disease” (Vivian Dayeh and Lucy Lee) and Plant Biotechnology section will hold its Post Doc and Student Oral Presentation Competitions. At noon, the Student Luncheon: “Networking Platform will bring an opportunity to meet, share experiences and build a professional network. Business cards are a great help here. Avery label card blanks make it easy to make your own as I do. In the afternoon, we will have the In Vitro Animal Student and Post Doc Oral Presentation Competition, symposium “High-Throughput Systems” (Pon Samuel and Pierluigi Barone, conveners), Non-competitive Student Oral Presentations, and the symposium “Recent Advances in Cell-Based Assays” (Pon Samuel and James Leary, conveners). The afternoon will conclude with In Vitro Animal and Plant Biotechnology Contributed Paper Sessions. Monday evening is the time for the section business meetings where awards are presented and the 2016 program is planned. Please participate in the section of your choice even if you are not a member. Your contributions are most welcome. Following the section business meetings, everyone comes together for the joint social—not to be missed! Food, beverage, and music makes for a great way to end the day.

Tuesday begins with the Plenary Symposium, “Bridging the Great Divide: New Methods to Communicate Science to Non-Scientists”, (Todd Jones and Patrick McNutt, conveners). This topic is critical for every member of the society, whether a student or senior scientist. We are increasingly in the position of trying to communicate on topics ranging from cancer research, epidemiology, GMO, to vaccines safety to an external community which has become much more skeptical of science and evidence-based reasoning in general. Following coffee and exhibitor visits, the morning symposia are “Haploid Technologies” (Jyoti Rout and Shamoni Maseshwari, conveners), “A Statistical Approach to Improving Plant Tissue Culture Media: Potentials and Challenges” (Valerie Pence and Michael Kane, conveners), and “MicroRNA and Cancer” (Michael Fay, Kolla Kristjansdottir and Mae Ciancio, conveners). Tuesday early afternoon will focus on regular and interactive posters sessions. In the 3:30 to 5 time block, there will be the Plant Biotechnology Contributed Paper session and the symposium “The Effects of Extracellular Matrix Properties on Cell Behaviors” (Joshua Gasiorowskin, convener). The SIVB business meeting follows the last session and all attendees are welcome to attend. Immediately following the business meeting buses will load for the Dinner at the Sonora Desert Museum Evening Event. The museum is especially interesting in the evening as wildlife comes out after the heat of the day. Dinner is included. Tickets must be purchased for this event. Buses will return about 9 pm.

Wednesday morning has a full program. The Plenary Symposium “From Small Cells to Big Data: Challenges and Solutions for Effective Data Management” (Addy Alt-Holland, Kathryn Houk, Patrick McNutt and Sukhpreet Sandhu, conveners). This plenary session will first introduce the application of big data approaches to biological problems when studied across multiple institutions and then discuss the challenges and trends in this quickly evolving field. The topic has application to both institutions and individual scientists. Three final symposia will conclude the meeting, “Conquering Chaos in the Age of Networked Science: Organizing, Storing and Securing you Data” (Addy Alt-Holland and Kathryn Houk, conveners), “Conservation and Gene Banks” (Maria Jenerek, convener) and “Emerging Technologies: Mechanisms of Reproductive Development” (Peggy Ozias-Atkins, convener).

Please plan to take advantage of this unique venue. The pools are great and the warm evenings are ideal. I look forward to seeing everyone at the Hilton Tucson El-Conquistador Golf and Tennis Resort.

John W. Harbell, 2015 Program Chair

 

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