This award funds the Gordon Research Conference on Plant Molecular Biology to be held at the Holderness School in New Hampshire on July 15-20, 2012. An important aspect of this conference is that it provides an opportunity for up to 36 invited speakers to interact closely for five days with about 140 participants that include graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and young faculty from universities all over the USA and the world, including scientists in the private and public sector. A unique aspect of this year's meeting involves the inclusion of the topic, Genomic Approaches to Plant Signaling, which highlights some of the most important recent discoveries in plant biology. For example, the scientists that discovered the receptor protein for the hormone abscisic acid will be presenting their latest work. This discovery, which Science magazine described as the second most important discovery in all of science in 2009, offers many new opportunities for improving the drought tolerance of plants. This goal is extremely important since with an increasing world population and a diminished supply of water and arable land, there are increasing pressures on the world's agricultural capabilites in terms of producing food and fiber for its population. In addition, recent discoveries of new ways of breeding plants for this trait and many other important and useful traits will be presented. There are a great many broader impacts of this conference. For example, collaboration is increasingly important in plant science and the sessions have been designed to foster interactions that nurture collaboration. The conference also seeks to train young scientists, our country's future scientific leaders, in a molecular understanding of the whole plant's basic mechanisms rather than one or two specialized areas of study. The conference thus meets the important need of providing a broader view of basic plant biology so that our future plant scientists are not so overly specialized that they cannot 'see the forest for the trees.'
The Gordon Research Conference on PLANT MOLECULAR BIOLOGY was held at Holderness School, Holderness New Hampshire, July 15 - 20, 2012. The Conference was well-attended with 167 participants (attendees list attached). The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, both U.S. and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. Of the 167 attendees, 81 voluntarily responded to a general inquiry regarding ethnicity which appears on our registration forms. Of the 81 respondents, 30% were Minorities – 1% Hispanic, 25% Asian and 4% African American. Approximately 37% of the participants at the 2012 meeting were women. In designing the formal speakers program, emphasis was placed on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field. There was a conscious effort to stimulate lively discussion about the key issues in the field today. Time for formal presentations was limited in the interest of group discussions. In order that more scientists could communicate their most recent results, poster presentation time was scheduled. Attached is a copy of the formal schedule and speaker program and the poster program. In addition to these formal interactions, "free time" was scheduled to allow informal discussions. Such discussions are fostering new collaborations and joint efforts in the field. Thank you for your support of this Conference. As you know, in the interest of promoting the presentation of unpublished and frontier-breaking research, Gordon Research Conferences does not permit publication of meeting proceedings.
