Conference: Endoplasmic reticulum

This proposal seeks partial support for a conference titled “Endoplasmic reticulum”,sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) to be held in June 2025 in Melbourne, Florida. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) carries out functions such as protein folding and lipid synthesis that are critical to cell life, and the ER has many important ties to human health and disease.

This conference is the major meeting for researchers studying different aspects of this organelle; it brings together scientists from many disciplines such as cell biology, biochemistry, neurobiology, structural biology, physiology, and genetics. The conference is largely focused on basic science, and thus has strong potential to inspire new ideas, collaborations, and discoveries.

In addition, the conference also aims to promote and inspire trainees and new investigators with many opportunities to present their own research, interact with the broader community, and share advice and perspectives on career opportunities and goals. Enhancing the participation of early career scientists will ensure the continued vitality of this research field in the future.

This proposal is designed specifically to support this latter goal, by providing funds for trainees to take part in the conference.

An overarching goal of this conference is to integrate research, education, training, and career development by bringing together a community of researchers and trainees who share an interest in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). This is the only conference in the USA that focuses on the ER. Topics include ER protein targeting, folding, and maturation, ER- associated degradation and ER-phagy, ER stress sensing and signaling, communication between the ER and other organelles processes, and lipid dynamics and storage.

A major goal of the conference is to encourage the active participation of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and newly appointed faculty in all aspects of the ER field. Thus, in addition to the faculty/senior scientist speakers, we will select 11 short talks to be presented by junior trainees (graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) and all poster presenters will have the opportunity to introduce their poster with a 2 min, one-slide flash-talk.

Two career development sessions have been tailored to meet the needs of early career scientists. Platform talks, poster sessions, "meet the speaker" seating at lunch and the poster flash-talk sessions have all been designed to promote interactions and in-depth discussions between the attendees of the meeting.

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.