Intellectual Merit. The 25th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research will be held July 28-August 1, 2014 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The conference will bring together scientists from across the world to discuss results of research using Arabidopsis as a model plant system. Knowledge gained from research on this model informs all aspects of basic plant biology. The meeting will feature keynote talks from leaders in the field: three who work on Arabidopsis and one who works on a non-plant system (yeast). As always, the conference will cover a broad range of topics, ranging from physiology to molecular biology. An emerging research area, Synthetic Biology, will be featured in one of the sessions. A new feature to highlight research from the posters will be the addition of two-minute "oral poster" talks (two per session), selected from submitted abstracts.
Broader Impacts. Meeting organizers have paid careful attention to encouraging participation of minority and early-career researchers. A recently established Minority Affairs Committee has formulated specific objectives for encouraging networking and collaboration, both during the meeting and afterward. The format of the meeting and the many types of events will ensure broad access and sharing of results of cutting edge plant biology research, in keeping with the spirit of free exchange that is a hallmark of the Arabidopsis community.
, July 28 - August 1, 2014. 625 attendees from 34 countries participated in 37 scientific and educational sessions, including platform, concurrent, and community-organized workshops. In recognition of the significance of the 25th gathering the three Arabidopsis Keynote speakers included in their presentations an assessment of the past, present and future of Arabidopsis research. The fourth Keynote Speaker, a yeast researcher, presented research and techniques that included parallels with Arabidopsis and provided insights on new directions that may benefit Arabidopsis research. This NSF funding supported the critical outreach mission to increase diversity in presenting at the conference. Through this NSF award, North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee (NAASC), the organizers of the 2014 conference, provided full-funding scholarships for 13 US URMs including three female junior faculty members recruited to co-lead career development and networking activities with the NAASC Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) co-chairs. The remaining 10 URM awardees were selected via competitive application process and included (by level): 2 undergraduate students, 5 graduate students, 3 junior faculty members; (by gender): 7 females and 3 males; (by URM status): 1 Hispanic, 4 African American, and 3 identifying as multi-racial, with the two remaining awardees qualifying by institution type; and (by institution type): 2 from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and 1 from a High Hispanic Serving Institution. Secondly, NAASC organizers and MAC co-chairs contacted awardees in advance to help establish the URM cohort a process that included gathering information to identify ‘faculty mentors’ in each awardee’s scientific area of interest, and which MAC leaders invited to participate as mentors and in pre-conference activities. Third, we developed several career development workshops specifically for URMs based on career level (i.e. student, postdoc, faculty); these were led by the URM ‘leaders’ we recruited and funded to participate via this project. Each URM leader developed their workshop’s program based, in part, on input gathered through pre-conference online surveys set up by NAASC and sent to URM awardees. In addition, URM awardees participated in one joint early-career researcher session with additional conference attendees. All workshops were open to all conference attendees. We furthermore organized two informal social networking meals; the first was a dinner including the 10 URM awardees, the MAC co-chairs, and the 3 URM leaders while the second event was a luncheon that included this same group with the addition of the remaining 7 members of the organizing committee (NAASC) and the lead conference organizer/NAASC Coordinator (also the URMs primary logistical liaison and available to answer any questions.) This was a very successful lunch because the NAASC faculty spread out amongst the awardees and engaged in fruitful discussions focusing on the URM awardees and their career aspirations. Last but not least, the NSF funding was used to support the new session of Synthetic Biology, an emerging discipline of biology that make use of advanced computational and engineering approaches to understand and manipulate biological systems. This NSF award covered the travel and registration costs of the three invited speakers in the Synthetic Biology session (Drs. June Medford, Motoki Tominaga, and Erik Jensen). In conclusion, this NSF award supported the critical mission of broaer impacts to mentor and promote URMs in STEM, and to intellectual merit of exposing the conference attendees into the emerging, cross-disciplinary field of biology.
