The Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders (SIMD) requests support to provide scholarships for trainees to attend its annual meetings in years 2016 to 2020. The 2016 meeting will be held in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, on April 3-6, 2016. The 2017 meeting will be held in conjunction with the International Congress on Inborn Errors of Metabolism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 5-8, 2017. The 2018 meeting will be held in San Diego, CA, March 11-14, 2018. The 2019 Meeting will be held in coordination with the American College of Medical Genetics in Seattle, Washington. The 2020 meeting will be held in a location to be determined in the USA. Inborn errors of metabolism (IEM) are an important cause of intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, neuromuscular disease, cardiac disorders, hepatic and renal dysfunction, arthritis, diabetes, growth failure and blindness. These conditions affect people of all ages, but children are disproportionately affected. The clinical and molecular spectrum of these disorders continues to expand, in part fueled by the rapid expansion of newborn screening programs with the identification of milder cases and advances in genomics (exome and whole genome sequencing) that identify patients at the most severe end of the spectrum. New therapies are becoming available for some conditions, with still relatively few clinical trials to identify new therapies for previously untreatable conditions. Much remains to be done to better understand these severe, rare disorders and to develop effective treatments for them. For the U.S. to remain pre-eminent in this important area of research, it is essential to attract young investigators into the field. One effective mechanism to achieve this goal is to provide them with the opportunity to participate in the SIMD meeting, where they can explore the field and develop scientific ties to other established investigators. The SIMD meeting is held annually and participation, especially by young investigators, has been steadily increasing each year. The availability of NIH travel awards has been a major reason for this increase. Trainees seeking funding are required to submit an abstract describing original research to be presented at the meeting. Trainees/young investigators usually submit about 30 abstracts for presentation at each meeting with twice that number for the international meeting (2017). Applications for travel awards will be competitively reviewed 3 months prior to each meeting, with the goal of making up to 15 annual awards of $ 1,000 each for the national meeting and up to 10 awards of $ 1,500 for the International meeting. Additional funds will be solicited from private sources. Women and minority applicants will be actively recruited.
The Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders (SIMD) meeting will help to train new physicians to take care of patients with disorders of the body?s biochemistry. There are very few such specialists in the country and providing travel funds for new trainees to meet and present their research encourages them to remain in the field.
