The Perinatal Research Society (PRS) consists of pediatricians, obstetricians, and basic scientists who are the nation's leaders in all aspects of perinatal research and have a wealth of experience in NIH funding and trainee mentoring. The overall purpose of the PRS annual meeting is twofold, 1) to provide productive interchange between scientists of different disciplines sharing a common research interest in perinatal biology, and 2) to encourage development and collaboration opportunities for Young Investigators (YI's) to build careers in perinatal research. The PRS annual meeting provides many important career development opportunities through it design. The YI program begins at a premeeting Workshop in which intensive one-on-one mentoring/teaching by senior PRS members leads to tangible progress in the YIs developing and expressing their own research ideas. However, it is in the Main Meeting that they become integrated with the society membership as a whole. The program itself presents the latest advances in the field but also provides the opportunity for some YI's to present their research ideas. Beyond the speaker program all YI's are constantly encouraged to network with the many established and indeed prominent researchers who have excelled at building successful careers. The intentional programmatic acknowledgement of and presentations by YI's within the Main Meeting, combined with many informal and formal interaction opportunities in a relaxed retreat-like setting contributes to YI professional development and creates opportunities to develop individual collaborations and mentoring relationships with senior colleagues. This is critical to future research career success. We seek funding to support a lectureship as part of the Main Meeting program, but also predominantly to support Young Investigators (YI) attendance and participation in the Main Meeting. The need for this kind of opportunity for early career development is significant because of the times in which we live. Many YI's are giving up their goal of a career in perinatal research. We believe this combined approach or premeeting Workshop and then Main Meeting attendance and further mentoring is unique, and we will track outcomes norms over the next five years to see if they exceed NIH norms.
The Perinatal Research Society (PRS) membership consists of pediatricians, obstetricians, and basic scientists who are actively engaged in perinatal research. The overall purpose of PRS is two-fold, 1) to provide productive interchange between scientists of different disciplines sharing a common research interest in perinatal biology, and 2) to encourage development and collaboration opportunities for Young Investigators (YI's) to build careers in perinatal research. The annual meeting of the Perinatal Research Society (PRS) establishes a forum in which research at the cutting edge of perinatal medicine and developmental biology can be shared by leading investigators in the three disciplines. Each year the PRS YI Program also invites YI's (those trainees who are transitioning to independent careers, such as Postdoctoral Fellows through Junior Faculty) to join these national leaders in the field. As they consciously learn of new developments they also are given the opportunity to formally and informally discuss their own ideas. These combined activities provide a unique learning experience that would likely not be found at any other scientific function. We seek funding to continue to support a lectureship as part of aim 1 but mostly to support YI attendance and participation in the annual meeting of the Perinatal Research Society (PRS). In this way we can create collaborations and mentoring relationships that can become ongoing and are critical to YI's future research career success.
