This is an application for partial support of the 16th biennial FASEB Science Research Conference (SRC) on Calcium and Cell Function, which will be held from June 10th - 15th 2018 in Granlibakken Tahoe, Tahoe City, CA. The objective of this conference is to stimulate discourse, seed new ideas, and inspire collaborations to accelerate new discoveries on Ca2+ signaling at the basic and translational levels. Calcium is the most ubiquitous second messenger in biology and plays critical regulatory roles in a wide range of dynamic process ranging from synaptic transmission to sensory perception, development, gene expression, cell migration, the immune response, and heart function. Defects in Ca2+ signaling lead to a correspondingly large number of serious diseases, including nervous disorders (stroke, mental illness, neurodegenerative diseases), immunodeficiencies, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, and developmental defects. Because of this extreme diversity of functions and pathologies, researchers working on Ca2+ signaling tend to present their work at different meetings with little overlap, even though there are many common mechanisms, approaches, and insights into Ca2+ signaling that transcend these boundaries. To address this, a primary purpose of this FASEB Conference is to bring together leading investigators from a diversity of fields to share the latest and most exciting developments in Calcium and Cell Function, with the aim of sharing information across disciplines, establishing new personal contacts, and promoting future collaborations. The chair of the 2018 conference will be Dr. Murali Prakriya (Northwestern University) and co-chairs Nicholas Demaurex (University of Geneva) and Barbara Niemeyer (Saarland University) all recognized leaders in Ca2+ signaling. The Program consists of eight scientific sessions, two keynote addresses and three special mentoring sessions. Several talks focus upon the molecular and cellular basis of diseases. There will be 34 session speakers giving full talks, including 14 women (39% of speakers) and 8 session chairs (4 of whom are women, 50%). Most of the invited speakers have not presented at this conference during the prior two meetings. We are planning to include several early career stage investigators and members of under- represented minorities in science, numbers that will be bolstered in 8 short talks to be selected from submitted abstracts. The conference venue has appropriate facilities for disabled attendees. Overall, the topics and themes covered in this conference will be timely and highly relevant for a broad population of scientists, clinicians, and the general public.
Calcium is a remarkably versatile and ubiquitous second messenger that regulates a wide range of physiological responses and plays a crucial role in numerous diseases affecting a variety of organs including the cardiovascular, nervous and immune systems. This grant will provide financial support for a conference that brings together basic and translational scientists from several different fields to share the latest discoveries related to calcium signaling in the context of health and disease.
