Biology,
Society And the Future
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
A one-day celebration of 75
years of science at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on
Quantitative Biology will be held in Grace Auditorium,
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Cold
Spring Harbor Asia Conferences represent the Laboratory's
new venture to develop a hub for the life sciences in
Asia. Programs will be held at Suzhou Dushu Lake Conference
Center in Suzhou, China, sixty miles west of Shanghai
and in easy reach of international and domestic airports.
Suzhou is an ancient city known as the Venice of China,
famous for its canals and private gardens and home to
scholars for more than two millenia. Symposia, conferences
and summer schools follow the Cold Spring Harbor tradition
in showcasing merit-based scientific advances in an informal
but intense atmosphere.
Congratulations
to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak
for being awarded the 2009
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In 1999, together
with Titia de Lange, Blackburn and Greider - then a scientist
working at Cold Spring Harbor - started the biennial CSH
meeting series on Telomeres
and Telomerase. Greider early presented her award-winning
work at the 1987 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Evolution
of Catalytic Function, while Jack Szostak was one of the
speakers at our recent 2009
Symposium on evolution (see below).
Congratulations
to Venki Ramakrishnan, Tom Steitz and Ada Yonath for being
awarded the 2009
Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As recalled by NIGMS
director Jeremy Berg Steitz and Yonath also presented
at the same 1987 CSH Symposium as Greider (see above).
Venki Ramakrishnan took CSHL's then new course on X-ray
crystallography in 1988, delivered the laboratory's Dorcas
Cummings lecture at the 2001 CSH Symposium on The Ribosome
(Steitz and Yonath also presented), and also spoke at
our recent 2009 Symposium
on evolution.
The
Best Conferences
– Genome Technology profiles the best conferences
in genome science. CSHL scores top in two represented
categories General Genomics (for the Biology of Genomes
meeting) and Bioinformatics (for the Genome Informatics
meeting) and the annual Biology of Genomes meeting is
also the standout overall winner across all categories
surveyed. Details available at www.genomeweb.com
Evolution
Symposium: The
2009 CSHL Symposium on Evolution - The Molecular
Landscape celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday
and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On
the Origin of Species attracted 400 participants
to CSH from around the world. Video/audio archive of interviews
with leading scientists (expert
chats) and a special session on evolution
and the public are now available. As with all our
meetings, Symposium participants can access the talks
through our Leading
Strand website.
New
policy on blogging, tweeting
etc - with the growth in
social networking tools, scientists often do their own
reporting and commenting. We have introduced some new
guidelines for bloggers and tweeters to safeguard presenters
at our meetings.
New
visa process: International
visitors to the U.S. from Visa
Waiver Program countries are now required to apply
for travel authorization online:
Electronic
System for Travel Authorization
{good for travel to the US within a 2 year
period}
Thanks to federal funds, foundation, corporate
and society support, we provided partial stipends to almost
700 graduate students and
postdocs who attended meetings or courses at Cold Spring
Harbor in 2009. Read testimonials
of course students from Argentina, Brazil, India and Romania
who received IBRO fellowships.
Please enquire about funding for individual meetings by
email to meetings@cshl.edu.
Requests for financial aid for the courses are part of
the application process.
Partner
meetings and courses
CERN
and antimatter, Hubble and the Big Bang, Antarctic extremes,
and a 'meeting of the minds' at Cold Spring Harbor, courtesy
of the San Francisco Exploratorium's Origins
