The Mid-Atlantic Microbial Pathogenesis Meeting will be held Feb. 6-8, 2005 at the Wintergreen Ski Resort near Charlottesville, VA. This will be the third annual meeting of this conference. The purpose of the conference is to foster communication and collaboration between scientists engaged in microbial pathogenesis research. During the first two years of the conference, we have attracted scientists from both within and outside the Mid-Atlantic region. An important aspect of this meeting will be to provide students and post-doctoral fellows with an opportunity to present their work to a knowledgeable audience, focused in their discipline, in a relaxed and collegial environment. The meeting will consist of four sessions over two days. Each session will feature an invited keynote speaker and talks by principal investigators, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students drawn from the submitted abstracts. Selection of the four keynote speakers is currently underway; in past years we have been successful in attracting renowned scientists from across the country. A poster session will provide an additional opportunity for participants to present and discuss their work. Scientists working in all aspects of microbial pathogenesis are expected to attend the meeting and present their work. A considerable number of NIH-funded investigators studying the virulence mechanisms of a variety of bacterial pathogens of human importance are located in this geographic region, and it is anticipated that many of these will actively participate in this meeting. The meeting will be publicized through a combination of advertisements in professional publications, direct mailings to relevant departments at academic institutions and government and private laboratories within the region, and blanket e-mail announcements directed at members of the local American Society for Microbiology branches that serve this region. A dedicated website (www.ecu.edu/mampm) has also been established to publicize the meeting and provide the necessary information and forms required for registration.
