This project will support attendance by postdoctoral fellows and graduate students at the International Conference on Ciliate Molecular Biology, to be held July 10-16, 2015 in Camerino, Italy. In keeping with a long-standing priority for this conference, participation by young researchers and under-represented minorities, including women, will be emphasized. The conference will offer opportunities for sharing latest research results in both formal and informal settings, and thus will provide an ideal environment for building scientific networks and collaboration.
This biannual meeting is the major convocation of experimental biologists working with ciliated protozoa, and plays a critical role in sustaining the vitality of this important research community. The participants are members of an array of discipline-specific fields, including cell biology, molecular evolution, structural biology, cell signaling, and nucleic acid biochemistry. The objectives of this meeting are to (i) disseminate new research information and ideas, (ii) share technical innovations, (iii) organize further development of community resources, and (iv) enhance graduate and undergraduate research and education initiatives. This conference will contain workshops on Future Directions and Ciliates in the Classroom, several platform sessions on the new and exciting research areas in the field of Ciliate Molecular Biology, and two poster sessions. Of note will be a session on genome evolution and adaptation, which will emphasize the application of computational approaches to study gene and genome evolution. Other sessions will feature additional examples of the application of new technologies to unravel molecular and cellular details of this fascinating group of organisms.
