Name of Meeting:
Meeting Dates:
Meeting Location:
Amount of funding requested:
$9,000
Other funding sources & amounts:
to be requested: Soc. Developmental Biology, $4,000; Wiley, $1,000; GRC, $18,000; NIH, $10,000
How would this program be different without AAA support?:
Anticipated value for AAA: Funds provided by AAA for the Neural Crest and Cranial Placodes Gordon Research Conference will be used in the first and third years to support the registration and housing for 6-8 junior faculty, post-doctoral researchers and PhD student attendees. Certificates that include the AAA name and logo will be provided to the award winners along with information about AAA and an invitation to join AAA. A slide communicating the sponsorship of AAA will be shown at the beginning and end of the morning and evening podium sessions. Sponsorship of the travel awards will provide high and broad visibility to acknowledge AAA’s involvement in the Neural Crest and Cranial Placodes Gordon Research Conference and also highlight the aims, mission and benefits of the AAA. It also will highlight the AAA’s journal, Developmental Dynamics.
To further encourage synergy between our group and AAA, we propose to use the second year of funding to plan a “Neural Crest and Placodes” mini-meeting at the 2016 AAA meeting in San Diego. We would do this in coordination with the AAA Program Committee and in particular the Program Committee Chairs. A similarly themed mini-meeting was held in 2011 in Washington D.C., and it proved to be very popular. The topic of “Neural Crest and Placodes” provides flexibility to cover many different scientific areas including core anatomy, development and morphology, stem cell biology, evolution, and disease, each of which appeals to the broad membership of AAA.
Our philosophy for the “Neural Crest and Placodes” mini-meeting at the 2016 AAA meeting would be to invite internationally accomplished investigators for plenary presentations and a number of nationally recognized faculty and early career stage speakers for individual symposium sessions. Some of these speakers could be chosen from the presenters and award winners at the 2015 GRC. We would also include in each session presenters to be selected from submitted abstracts.
Without the support of AAA, we would anticipate that fewer junior researchers will be able to attend, and be exposed to the benefits of AAA membership. Junior scientists are more likely to join a society that has sponsored key events in their career development, and to continue loyalty to that society as their career matures. The support of AAA for the mini-symposium will bring GRC speakers to the AAA meeting and provide exposure to the vibrancy of the organization.
Neural Crest and Cranial Placodes Gordon Research Conference
Conference Organizers:
Conference Purpose and Justification
Neural crest and cranial placode cells make extensive contributions to embryonic structures. Acquisition of the neural crest and placodes were key events in the evolution of the vertebrate head and cranial sensory organs. Defects in neural crest and placode development disproportionally underlie human birth defects, hearing loss and the formation of pediatric solid tumors. Thus, study of stem cells derived from them holds great promise for regenerative medicine. Because neural crest cells are a highly migratory population of cells during embryogenesis, understanding the regulation of their motility may also shed light on the misregulated invasiveness of metastatic tumor cells. In the past decade, there has been an explosive increase in interest in neural crest and placode cells as the gene regulatory networks that control their development are uncovered. These cells provide experimentally tractable systems for investigating a broad array of fundamental questions in cell, developmental, evolutionary, and systems biology, and this fundamental knowledge is now being applied to stem cell therapies, tissue regeneration and cancer biology.
The goal of the Neural Crest and Cranial Placodes Gordon Research Conference is to accelerate the exchange of information about the development, evolution and clinical consequences of dysregulation of these two important contributors to craniofacial structures across different model systems, and to promote technological innovations and a systems scale understanding of the mechanisms that govern the formation and subsequent differentiation of the neural crest and cranial placodes. This conference will bring researchers together to exchange ideas, form collaborations, and mentor young scientists studying in this area of basic and biomedical research.
We have organized a preliminary program for the 2015 GRC that builds on the success of the 2013 meeting. We intend to choose from the most exciting talks at the 2015 GRC speakers to present in a mini-meeting at the 2016 AAA meeting that we will organize, with the assistance of the AAA program committee. For the 2017 GRC, Sally Moody will serve as Chair, and a co-Chair will be selected by the participants at the 2015 GRC.
Preliminary Program for 2015 GRC
Session Topic 1: Neural Crest and Placode Formation
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 2: Cell Lineage Determination
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 3: Morphogenesis and Migration
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 4: Congenital Malformations
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 5: Genomics and Proteomics
Leader Name(s): Richard Harland (UC Berkeley)
Speaker Names: Robert Kelsh (Univ. Bath); Tatjana Sauka-Spengler (Oxford Univ.)
Session Topic 6: Stem Cells and Tissue Regeneration
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 7: Focus on Disease: Cancers of the Neural Crest
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 8: Cell Plasticity
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
Session Topic 9: Evolutionary Perspectives
Leader Name(s): xx
Speaker Names: xx
In each session there will be 1-2 talks by junior researchers chosen from the abstracts. Each day there will be a morning session, an afternoon poster session, and an evening session. Each session is 3.5 hours in length to encourage for questions and discussion of each talk.
Selection of Speakers: The Speakers and Discussion Leaders for the 2015 GRC were chosen from international leaders in the field as well as more junior scientists with particularly ground-breaking results. In addition to the 21 invited speakers, 13 talks will be chosen from abstracts: these slots will be held for junior scientists, women and minority speakers.
Expected Audience: We anticipate the audience to consist of advanced graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty at all levels who are interested in: the development and evolution of neural crest and/or cranial sensory placodes; related birth defects; neural crest related cancers; and stem cells and tissue regeneration. This optimally integrates basic and clinical interests in one unified meeting. The 2013 meeting received a High-Performance Rating from the GRC based on participant feedback, who rated the conference as “above average” on all evaluation areas (science, discussion, management, atmosphere, suitability).
Budget: 2015 GRC: partial support for registration/food/housing for 6-8 junior speakers (in 2013 this cost was $960/person) = $3,000. (Preference will be given to AAA members)
2016 Symposium at the AAA annual meeting: travel for 6 speakers ($500 each) = $3,000.
2017 GRC: registration/food/housing for 6-8 junior speakers = $3,000.
Acknowledgement of AAA Support: Funding will be acknowledged in the GRC program and website. Certificates that include the AAA name and logo will be provided to the travel awardees along with information about AAA and an invitation to join AAA. A slide communicating the sponsorship of AAA will be shown at the beginning and end of the morning and evening podium sessions. All participants will be encouraged to join AAA by the conference organizers, and the organizers will provide AAA with an electronic list of participants. All talks will be appropriate for publication in Developmental Dynamics, which we will encourage, and we propose to organize a Special Issue for DD.