This conference is designed to bring together established, new and young investigators in the broad field of microbial polysaccharides to facilitate the exchange of new concepts in microbial cell biology, microbial-plant biology, industrial applications, gene regulation, and structure/function as they pertain to microbial polysaccharides. Presently, there is no other conference that promotes the interactions of scientists from academia, industry, and government agencies in the field of microbial polysaccharides; therefore, there is a great need for this conference. The 2011 meeting will have eight sessions that will cover in detail new topics and ideas that have emerged during this time and will spawn new scientific investigations and collaborations.
Broader Impacts In addition to the gathering of the world's best scientists in the field of microbial polysaccharides, this meeting has a broader impact in developing the careers of young scientists. The contribution of young scientists will be emphasized by selecting the best abstracts from this group (graduate students/postdoctoral fellows) for the presentation of short talks. From these, ten travel awards will be presented. The organizers will make every effort to select individuals from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to present these short talks. In addition, a junior faculty award will be presented to an outstanding junior faculty just beginning their career in this field. At this conference, there are extensive opportunities for young scientists to mingle with the experts in the field in the "meet the experts" session, at informal poster sessions, and during the scheduled free time, which all allow enhanced training opportunities for young investigators. This conference also promotes the careers of women as three of the four organizers of the conference are women and 12 of the 34 session chairs/invited speakers are women. In addition, the organizers will actively promote this meeting to minorities and persons with disabilities. These meetings will continue to provide a unique environment for scientific exchange between diverse groups of investigators in the area of microbial polysaccharides and will continue to foster scientific growth in this important field.
This conference grant helped fund the FASEB Summer Research Conferences on "Microbial Polysaccharides of Medical, Agricultural and Industrial Importance" which was held June 5-10, 2011 in Carefree, Arizona. The objective of this conference was to bring together the best investigators in the field of microbial polysaccharides with young investigators, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, to address issues in microbial polysaccharides that span diverse fields. This conference has served as an important forum to encourage multi-disciplinary interactions and new cutting-edge research directions and applications for microbial polysaccharides. A multi-disciplinary meeting, such as this FASEB Summer Research Conference, is essential in this field because it provides interactions among investigators that normally have limited opportunities to meet and exchange ideas at national meetings. This conference is the only one of its kind dedicated to the topic of microbial glycobiology, and as such, is immensely important to this field. The program included a keynote lecture and eight additional sessions. The sessions covered a range of topics pertaining to microbial glycobiology and included "LPS and capsule biosynthesis and assembly", "Prokaryotic protein glycosylation", "Regulation of microbial glycan synthesis", "Interaction with host cells", "Polysaccharide-based vaccines and therapeutics", "Industrial and agricultural applications of microbial polysaccharides and enzymes", and "Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Food Technology". All of the sessions were extremely well attended and the surveys by the attendees indicated that it was a highly successful conference with 100% of responders stating that they would recommend the conference to others. Intellectual Merit: This meeting is designed to bring together established, new and young investigators in the broad field of microbial polysaccharides to facilitate the exchange of new concepts in microbial cell biology, microbial-plant biology, industrial applications, gene regulation, and structure/function as they pertain to microbial polysaccharides. Presently, there is no other conference that promotes the interactions of scientists from academia, industry, and government agencies in the field of microbial polysaccharides; therefore, there is a great need for this conference. This was the sixth time that this conference convened with previous meetings held in 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008. At the 2011 conference, many new concepts and techniques were presented that have spawned new avenues of scientific investigation and collaborations. Broader Impacts: In addition to the gathering of the world’s best scientists in the field of microbial polysaccharides, this meeting has a broader impact in developing the careers of young scientists. We were successful in attracting a large number of young scientists including 20 graduate students and 11 postdoctoral fellows/research associates. The total number of this young group represented 44% of the registrants. The conference included 14 short talks of 15 minutes, the majority of which were presented by young investigators, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. This represented a great opportunity for these young scientists to present their results in front of the entire audience, which consisted of many world-class leaders in this field. The quality of these short talks was excellent and contributed immensely to the success of the conference. To reward them for the high quality of their short talks and poster presentations, we gave out one travel award to one young investigator (Assistant Professor rank), and 10 travel awards to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Seven of these 11 travel awards were awarded to women. These travel awards helped to compensate some of the travel costs of these young scientists to attend this conference. This conference also had a large number of female participants which was 47%. Of the session chairs and invited speakers, 12/33 (36%) were women.
