This proposal requests partial support for the yearly La Jolla Immunology Conference (LJIC) over the next five years. The 2013 LJIC meeting will represent the 34th annual conference that brings together fundamental Immunologists from the San Diego and has included members of the Los Angeles region (over the past 5 years). This superb small meeting will be held October 8-10, 2008 at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. This is a longstanding meeting that provides a high-level training ground for Immunology students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. The meeting focuses on our local Southern California Immunology community and draws over 400 attendees in recent years. Participants and speakers are drawn primarily the numerous participating local research institutes including UCSD, The Scripps, Salk, and Sanford-Burnham Institutes, and The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology as well as participants from UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UCLA, USC, Cal-Tech, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The meeting focuses on the most exciting Immunology research that is being pursued in the area and the yearly program is designed to showcase current emerging trends and highlight future directions. The meeting runs for 2.5 days with 16 speakers invited from the rank of faculty (at least 6 new investigators) and 16 speakers selected from abstracts submitted in the summer prior to the meeting. A further 60-80 abstracts are presented as posters. Each meeting features an internationally-recognized keynote speaker. The goals of this meeting are: 1) to maximize the training experience for younger scientists in the area of Immunology 2) to foster a strong community spirit in the San Diego and greater Los Angeles area that contains so many outstanding laboratories focused on Basic Immunology. 3) to encourage and facilitate new collaborations between individuals and groups at separate academic institutions. 4) to elaborate the potential for larger multi-focal (and perhaps multi-disciplinary) scientific initiatives that utilize the substantial breadth and depth of scientific research in the local environment.
Over the past 38 years, The La Jolla Immunology Conference has grown from a small annual gathering of a few laboratories in San Diego to become the preeminent basic and applied immunology research conference for the entire Southern California Immunology community, involving more than a dozen research universities and institutes and attracting more than 400 attendees while maintaining its relevance and dynamism to foster collaboration and enhance the training of young scientists. Partial support is sought to continue this worthy effort into the future so that the promise of the immune system in health and disease can be realized.
