Thursday, March 20

Information on a Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Notch signaling

Dear Professors and Colleagues,

We are delighted to inform you about our Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on “Notch Signaling in Development, Regeneration and Disease: From Molecular Mechanisms to Translational Research” that will take place on July 19-20, 2014 at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
GRS is a meeting of, by, and for students and postdocs that will be immediately be followed by the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on “Notch Signaling in Development, Regeneration and Disease” chaired by Dr. Alain Israël and co-chaired by Drs. Warren Pear and Stephen Blacklow that will take place on July 20-25, 2014 at the same venue.
It would be great if you can help spreading this information to students and postdocs who are working on Notch signaling and may be interested in attending the meeting. The details can be found in the attached poster and on the following website. The important deadlines are April 19 2014 (Speaker abstract deadline) and June 21 2014 (General application deadline).
The GRS program began nine years ago to enable graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience to take an initiative organizing a meeting in order to establish a highly-stimulating and non-intimidating environment of discussions with their current research and building informal networks with their peers that may lead to a lifetime collaboration and scientific achievement. Each seminar is held in conjunction with a related GRC and begins the weekend immediately prior to the GRC. These seminars are organized by young investigators with the support of leading scientists from the associated GRC. We also invite a small number of investigators in the field from both academics and industry to serve as mentors during the course of the meeting. In addition, the majority, if not all, of the GRS participants are expected to participate in the following GRC.
The unique format of the 2-day GRS conference is designed to maximize productive interaction and discussion between young scientists and senior mentors. To promote the discussion of cutting-edge research, Gordon Research Conferences/Seminars are officially “off-the-record”, with no abstracts or proceedings published before, during, or after the conference, and ample time is provided between sessions for socializing and informal discussions with fellow attendees. Approximately 10 abstracts will be selected for oral presentation, and all the other attendees must present a poster. If one would like to be considered for an oral presentation, abstracts must be submitted by April 19, 2014.
The topic of our GRS is the Notch signaling pathway. As you know, Notch signaling is an evolutionarily conserved signaling pathway that is involved in numerous developmental and post-developmental events, and its dysregulation is known to cause many human diseases, including congenital disorders, strokes and cancer. Furthermore, as Notch signaling plays critical roles in stem cell biology in most, if not all, contexts, basic and translational studies of this pathway are essential for the future success of regenerative medicine to cure complicated and life threatening conditions such as diabetes, kidney diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. To precisely understand how Notch signaling works in our bodies at the molecular level, and to apply these basic knowledge to clinical settings, it is essential to facilitate interactions between cell-/molecular-/developmental-/structural-biologists, bioinformaticians, geneticists, chemists and clinicians from a young stage of their carriers. Since the majority of conferences that young scientists currently participate in are based on either the field they belong to (Cancer, Cell Biology, Developmental Biology etc.), the methods they use (Crystallography, Systems Biology etc.), the tissues and organs they study (Cardiology, Neuroscience etc.) or model organisms they study (flies, worms, mice, etc.), a GRS focusing on a multidisciplinary field such as Notch signaling offers a unique opportunity for the participants to learn and communicate with a diverse group of scientists from different specialization areas. By the end of the meeting, we hope to establish a sense of community among the participants, all of whom study a common biological pathway with critical implications for human health.
Thank you in advance for your help and your participation. 

Sincerely,
Shinya Yamamoto (Chair) and Mustafa Turkoz (Associate Chair)

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Shinya Yamamoto, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Chair, 2014 Gordon Research Seminar on Notch Signaling in
  Development, Regeneration and Disease
Fellow, Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute
  at Texas Children’s Hospital
Department of Molecular and Human Genetics
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
yamamoto@bcm.edu
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