The primary objective of the meeting is to provide participants with a broad overview of current research on HIV, including therapy, animal models, epidemiology, and vaccine design. The meeting will also feature presentations on herpes viruses and HTLV and will aim for cross fertilization of disciplines and ideas. The overview will consist of three and one half days of non-concurrent, state-of-the-art presentations by leaders in all chosen topic areas. Each of the 42 invited speakers will have 35 minutes to review his or her area of research. Ten minutes of discussion will follow each presentation. The general sessions that follow will focus on presentation of new data in each topic area. These sessions will run concurrently, two lectures at a time, for roughly two days. Where possible, the concurrent sessions have been designed to attract different subsets of participants. Each of the roughly 110 invited speakers for the general sessions will have 15 to 30 minutes to make a presentation. Two poster sessions, two tutorial sessions, and a mini symposium on tumor biology are also scheduled. For each tutorial session, 4-6 topics have been chosen for open simultaneous discussion. Each tutorial will run for two hours. The objective of the tutorials is to allow for open discussion of topics that may not be of sufficient general interest to the participants to justify a general session. To encourage free exchange of new ideas and findings, an embargo on the press will be enforced, and the meeting size will be limited to 1200 participants.
