This is a new application for the Annual Summer 2015 Symposium of the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences (BCVS) of the American Heart Association (AHA). This conference has had continuous support from the NHLBI for the last 10 years and this will be the 11th Anniversary meeting. Support from the NHLBI has helped foster a meeting that has become the go to conference dealing with molecular cardiovascular biology and disease. It represents its sponsor, the BCVS of the AHA, which is the world's leading organization of cardiovascular scientists. This conference started originally two decades ago as the Council held a Molecular Cardiology conference in 1991 and then had several meetings initially hailed as the Snowbird Conference as it was held during the summer at Snowbird, Utah. The meeting became an annual event in 2002 and since 2004 this conference has been recognized as a permanent, recurring scientific meeting of the AHA and which is when R13 funding also commenced. The conference in recent years has added translational topics as well as the bread and butter of this meeting, which is basic molecular cardiovascular research. The conference has always attracted the leading researchers in fields such as microRNA, cardiac gene and cell therapy, cardiac development and most recently, tissue engineering and iPS cells. The attendance of this conference has climbed every year and in 2014 we had an all-time high attendance of over 600. As in past years, the conference will be held in July and this year will return to New Orleans (the site of the 2011 and 2012 meetings) after two years in Las Vegas. The meeting will be held at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, New Orleans, LA. The planned agenda represents an ambitious, fast-paced meeting with 14 sessions over 4 days (July 13-16, 2015) including the Keynote lecture by Dr. Eric Olson. Young cardiovascular scientists will be highlighted as well through invited talks in each session and Posters will be presented over the course of 3 days of the conference. Organizers of this meeting are Drs. Asa Gustafsson (UCSD), Anthony Rosenzweig (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and David J. Lefer (Louisiana State University). The proposal request constitutes approximately 7% of the total meeting budget and as we have done over the last several years, support from this application will be used toward Cardiovascular Outreach Awards (minority travel awards) and Young Investigator Travel Awards.
This proposal is for support of the annual conference (2015) of the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Council of the American Heart Association. This meeting meets every July and is attended by basic and translational cardiovascular scientists where scientific exchange in this field is at its highest level. This meeting and those like it can accelerate discoveries pertinent to new therapies for heart disease, which are greatly needed. This meeting is a great learning experience for junior scientists and trainees and thus, optimizes the future return of investment in medical research by public dollars.
