Conference: Auxin 2022: Cavtat, Croatia 2-7 October 2022

This award supports travel and registration fees for selected US participants in the Auxin 2022 meeting of international scholars in Cavtat, Croatia, in October 2022. The award covers travel expenses for two early-career female faculty from the US who are invited speakers, and meeting registration fees to allow 30 American early-career scientists, including students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty, and members of groups under-represented in science, to participate in the meeting.

The meeting focuses on recent advances and future directions in the study of the plant hormone auxin. Plants are “born,” or germinate from a seed, with a simple body plan. Initially, young plants consist of a set of young leaves and a simple root.

From this simple seedling, cues from the environment (Where is the sunlight? Where are the soil nutrients? What season is it?) shape the growth of new organs, such as branches, leaves, and flowers.

How this happens is not yet fully understand, but it is known that auxin is an essential regulator of almost every aspect of plant growth and development. The auxin field is one of the most active and rapidly developing areas in plant biology, and new discoveries in this field are contributing to the development of new crops and solutions to food insecurity.

To encourage interaction and collaboration among researchers working in the field, this award facilitates inclusion of US scientists in the Auxin 2022 meeting in Croatia, where they will be exposed to new discoveries, interact with international colleagues, and become part of new collaborations.

The quadrennial Auxin Meeting, held in October 2022 in Cavtat, Croatia, seeks to promote the exchange of ideas, establishment of future research directions, and development of collaborative relationships among international scientists who study multiple aspects of how the plant hormone auxin regulates plant growth and development. The meeting also represents an opportunity for early-career investigators, trainees, and individuals from underrepresented groups to interact with leaders in the field and to join the international auxin community.

More than 30 leading scientists from thirteen countries have agreed to share their latest results at the meeting. The list of invited speakers includes twelve women and eight junior scientists. The award will support travel for two of these invited speakers and meeting registration for 30 additional individuals.

To promote dissemination of new discoveries on auxin, invited speakers will prepare papers summarizing new directions in the field that will be published in a special issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, and an overview of the auxin field will be submitted to the journal, Plant Cell.

The award is co-funded by the Plant Genome Research Program and the Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics Program in the BIO Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.