Over a decade ago, Dr. Stephen Schwartz (University of Washington, Seattle) and colleagues partnered with the North American Vascular Biology Organization (NAVBO) to create a summer course that provided foundational and cutting-edge training in the subject of vascular biology. This effort in motion a tradition, such that each year in different locations around the country, a vascular biology course is organized. As in the past courses, Vasculata 2018 primarily aims to educate students?at whatever stage of their careers--and to extend vascular biology education to a broad group of trainees, including those who may otherwise have limited access to education in vascular biology. The meeting will take place July 23-26, 2018, at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, with some workshops occurring at the University of Missouri at Columbia. This educational mission is especially important because there exist few formal graduate training programs in vascular biology, and there is no unifying text book that covers all the major topics in vascular biology. We believe that formal educational opportunities, such as this course offers, are vital tools to gaining true expertise and facility with a field. The Vasculata course fills a key gap for many students, who otherwise lack access to formal instruction in vascular biology. Thus, Vasculata 2018 first aims to provide a solid, comprehensive, and state-of-the-art educational venue for those seeking training in vascular biology. Second, we aim to provide a direct laboratory experience in vascular biology techniques to trainees. In 2009, Vasculata courses began offering opportunities to trainees to choose hands-on and demonstration workshops to see techniques in action. The current conference aims to ensure that all trainees have access to array of choices for techniques that they wish to learn more about. We will hold a hands-on writing workshop on the same day as well. Third, the course seeks to promote diversity in vascular biology. We seek to expose students from a wide range of backgrounds and origins to state-of-the-art vascular biology.
We aim to use scholarship opportunities as well as targeted advertisement will be used to help increase participation of those with financial need, underrepresented minorities, and faculty/students from local institutions with lesser resources that through this opportunity might make meaningful connections to heighten vascular biology- related interactions in the greater St Louis area for the foreseeable future. Finally, we aim to consolidate interactions among student and faculty groups through networking. Networking between students, student- faculty, and faculty-faculty will be facilitated by the design of the meeting that includes formal and informal opportunities for interactions and poster sessions.
Vasculata 2018 is a specialized conference devoted to providing a comprehensive introduction to vascular biology for approximately 80 (max 100) trainees. Vascular biology impacts every organ in healthy and disease states, yet there is no textbook, and typically no courses at universities, that comprehensively covers the field in the range of disciplines that converge upon it. Thus, this specialized course meets a critical need in vascular biology education of future and present scientists.
