The purpose of this international symposium is to present current work in the broad field of neural regeneration, while highlighting areas in which notable recent progress has been made or in which some particularly interesting issues have been raised. The symposium is planned for December 12-16, 2001, at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. It is the ninth in a series of alternate year conferences, all held at the same site and during the same part of the year. The previous eight symposia were in December of 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999. The NIH has continuously cosponsored the symposia since 1987, and since the inception of the symposia, the Department of Veterans Affairs has helped to underwrite the costs of the conferences by providing support to: 1) the organizing office; 2) the symposium planning committee meetings; and 3) additional support for each symposium. Applications for support of the 2001 conference have also been submitted to the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, all of whom co-sponsored the 1997 and 1999 symposia. The proposed 2001 program, which was the product of a meeting of the Office of Regeneration Research Programs Advisory Board on August 5, 2000, includes a keynote speaker, two featured speakers, and six major topic sessions, each with a chairman who will present an introductory overview, plus a total of 30 invited session speakers. In addition, there will be free communications in the form of posters contributed by symposium registrants. The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to register, and student attendance is both encouraged and financially supported. The number of registrants is estimated at 250. The content of the symposium will be widely disseminated in the form of a summary in the Regeneration Research Newsletter (international circulation of 4,500), by publication of the abstracts in a journal, by placement of the abstracts on the World Wide Web, and by publishing the proceedings in book form. The long-range plan is to hold the neural regeneration symposia regularly on alternate years at the same time of year and in the same location. These meetings at Asilomar have a single session format and have been organized to maximize interchange between investigators, or between seasoned investigators and students, in the form of free afternoons. This format has been very successful during the previous eight symposia.
