The field of developmental biology encompasses several scientific disciplines that explore how complex organisms, from plants to humans, arise from a single fertilized egg. The Society for Developmental Biology, founded in 1939, has organized the major worldwide meeting in this subject for the past 70 years, missing two during World War II. At these meetings, scientists at all career levels communicate and share their latest results. A recent example is the first public report on the isolation and culture of human fetal stem cells by Dr. John Gearhart, paving the way for the field of regenerative medicine. Other basic findings on regulation of the process of development using different model organisms have contributed to improvements in health of people as well as of animals and environment. Although the majority of participants are from the United States, many of whom receive grants from the National Science Foundation, some investigators attend from around the world. The meetings rotate across the country to ease the travel burden for investigators from various regions, as well as to showcase a range of hosting universities. Students, postdoctoral trainees and junior faculty are given ample opportunity to present their experimental results in poster sessions, and the best ones are chosen to give short talks. In addition, workshops are offered at these meetings to promote career advancement of junior-investigators and teach them skills to navigate the challenges along their career path. There is long-term interest in the subject of developmental biology, which is a central biological problem, as well as increasing public interest in issues such as birth defects, cloning and stem cells. This highlights the importance of the subject both in terms of scientific advancement and public education.
Society for Developmental Biology Annual Meetings 2009-2011 The Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) is the largest society devoted to this field, with over 2200 members worldwide, including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and established investigators, many of whom hold NSF grants. SDB has been organizing annual meetings since its founding in 1939, missing only two years during WWII. They are the major forum where participants present their latest discoveries in the discipline, many still unpublished. The three meetings supported by the present NSF grant rotated from West Coast (San Francisco) to Mountain (Albuquerque) to Central (Chicago) Regions, a practice to ease travel burden for delegates from the different regions. These meetings followed the traditional format of mixing plenary sessions, concurrent symposia, awards lectures, a postdoctoral symposium, an education symposium, dedicated poster sessions, and workshops on new technologies, teaching, publishing and current issues. In all meetings, a special effort was made to have a diversity of speakers in terms of: model organisms, experimental approaches, career stages, gender and racial/ethnic backgrounds. In alternating years, the day before start of the meeting, new faculty (Boot Camp for New Faculty) and mid-career faculty (Faculty Re-Boot Camp) had a chance to receive intensive professional development training focused on issues specific for each stage of their academic career, including innovative teaching approaches and laboratory management skills. In order to complement the topics presented in the meeting programs, satellite symposia were organized by SDB members on the first day of each meeting. They also brought in speakers and registrants who might not have planned to attend the annual meeting. Being primarily a field that crosses disciplinary boundaries, advances in developmental biology contribute to progress in other areas such as evolution, genetics, morphology, genomics and bioinformatics. Although not immediately realized by the public or even by many specialists, knowledge and findings from studies of developmental processes have paved the way to emerging fields including regenerative biology, stem cell biology, development of biomaterials and treatments for reconstructive/regenerative medicine, and preservation of biodiversity on Earth. Developmental studies using fluorescent markers presented at our meetings have also facilitated the commercialization of some of these markers for research and diagnostic uses. Potential long range use of information collected by our meeting participants by various industries must also be acknowledged. Education, mentoring and advancement of budding scientists are a major focus of the SDB mission and this is evidenced in our annual meetings. The education symposia addressed crucial current issues on: "teaching evolution," "new biology for century 21: how to inspire the students and the public" and "innovative strategies for integrating new technologies into syllabi." The junior investigators were given plenty of opportunities at the annual meetings to showcase their work as selected postdoctoral or short talk speakers in platform sessions, besides presentations at the stand-alone poster sessions. Competitions were held for the best postdoctoral presentation and the best student posters to draw out the best of these youngsters. A large number of student and postdoctoral fellows were awarded travel grants to defray meeting expenses, and priority was given to those from small budget laboratories or who had farther distances to travel. This practice has succeeded in maintaining a population of about 60% trainees attending our meetings. The total attendance over these three years was around 2,600 with about 1,500 posters presented.
