2004 NATIONAL DROSOPHILA BOARD MEETING

 

March 24, 2004, Washington DC

Maryland C, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, 2 – 6 p.m.

 

 

		Report
INTRODUCTION & APPROVAL OF THE 2003 MINUTES	2:00 – 2:10	1
MEETING ORGANIZATION	2:10 – 2:40
2004 PROGRAM COMMITTEE    (Paul Lasko, Howard Lipshitz)	10’	2
2004 PROGRAM COMMITTEE   (Kavita Arora, Rahul Warrior, Frank Laski)
SANDLER LECTURESHIP COMMITTEE  (Ross Cagan)	5’	3
REPORT OF THE GSA MEETING COORDINATOR  (Marsha Ryan)	10’	4
2004 MEETING SITE SUMMARY
2007 MEETING SITE SELECTION
TREASURER’S REPORT    (Rick Fehon)	2:40 – 2:50 10’	5
DROSOPHILA BOARD COMPOSITION	2:50 – 3:00
ELECTION REPORT (Trudi Schüpbach)		6
PROPOSAL ON PRESIDENT’S TERM  (Trudi Schüpbach)	10’	7
NOMENCLATURE COMMITTEE REPORTS     (Scott Hawley, Kevin Cook)	5’	8
COMMUNITY RESOURCE REPORTS & PROJECTS I	3:00 - 4:00
BLOOMINGTON STOCK CENTER  (Kathy Matthews, Kevin Cook)    REPORT OF ADVISORY COMMITTEE (Hugo Bellen)	10’ 10’	9 10
KYOTO STOCK CENTER (Yoshi Yamamoto)	10’	11
P ELEMENT COLLECTION (Allan Spradling)	20’	12
TUCSON STOCK CENTER  (Teri Markow)
SPECIES SEQUENCING PROJECT (Markow, Clark, Langely, Gelbart))	10’	13
DIS (Jim Thomson)		14
BREAK & SNACKS	4:00 – 4:15
SPECIAL GUEST  Judith Plesset (NSF)	4:15 – 4:45	15
COMMUNITY RESOURCE REPORTS & PROJECTS II	4:45—5:30
NIH/NSF OUTREACH (Bill Gelbart/Ruth Lehmann)	20’	16
FLYBASE (Bill Gelbart)	10’	17
IMAGE AWARD (David Bilder)	5’	18
GSA POSTER AND TALK AWARD (Lynn Cooley)	10’	19
	5:30

 

 

 

 

2004 Drosophila Board Meeting Minutes

March 24, 2004, Washington D.C.  Marriott Wardman Hotel

 

Present: Kavita Aurora, Michael Ashburner, Hugo Bellen,  David Bilder, Amy Bejsovec, Ken Burtis, Ross Cagan, Kevin Cook, Lynn Cooley,  Claude Desplan, Rick Fehon, Bill Gelbart, Scott Hawley, Yash Hiromi, David Ish-Horovitz, Henry Krause,  Frank Laski, Chuck Langley, Ruth Lehmann,  Dennis McKearin, Brian Oliver, Susan Parkhurst,  Laurel Raftery, Marsha Ryan, Rob Saint, Trudi Schupbach, Allan Spradling, Jim Thompson, Barbara Wakimoto  and Toshi Yamamoto

 

1.  2003 BOARD MEETING SUMMARY

2003 Board Meeting Minutes were approved.  This report can be found on flybase.

 

2.  REPORT OF THE 2004 PROGRAM COMMITTEE (Howard Lipshitz and Paul Lasko)

Howard Lipshitz and Paul Lasko extended thanks to Marsha Ryan and GSA staff for their excellent support in organizing this year’s meeting.  They reported that everything went smoothly. They agreed with previous organizers that the workshop are still the most time consuming part since their success depends on the organization talents of the workshop chairs.  Their philosophy was to accept all proposed workshops and they had a record number of workshops.  Suggestions for next year include:  1) asking authors to provide full first names on their abstract submissions so the organizers can more easily monitor gender balance; 2)  we should continue to check on the availability of internet connections for people wanting to present database development.  Although we would like to offer this option, feasibility and costs will be site dependent.  The Board asked Marsha to check on a room for the next meeting in Houston set aside to be used just for computer presentations. It may be possible to buy a block of computer time rather than service throughout the entire conference to save money.  Another concern is the added costs for security for the computers.  Contributions for covering these expenses may come the presenters and it was suggested that at least some presenters may be willing to pay.  The question of whether to provide for this new service in Houston will have to be settled soon since Marsha needs a budget for the 2005 meeting by June.

 

Registration:  Pre-registration for the meeting continues to be strong, as detailed in the report from Marsha Ryan.  1540 people have registered for the meeting.  An additional ~100 participants are expected to register at the meeting itself.  The strong attendance continues even with the increased accommodation expenses and registration fees. 

Plenary Speakers:  Twelve plenary speakers were invited for the two plenary sessions on Thursday and Sunday morning.  Plenary speakers were chosen for their excellent science and for their ability to communicate in talks.  We made efforts to cover a broad range of current topic areas, to include investigators at different stages in their careers, and to achieve gender and geographical balance to the greatest extent possible: 4 junior and 8 senior; 7 male and 5 female; 8 from the US, 2 from the UK, 1 each from Canada and Israel.  At Bill Gelbart's suggestion, we took advantage of the fact that the conference is in Washington DC to invite Francis Collins to give a plenary talk on "Biology in the era of complete genomes".  Peter Lawrence was invited to be the keynote speaker for the opening night, and will speak on “Pattern formation: from flake to avalanche”.  An updated List of Plenary Speakers is appended to this report, which includes the year 2004 invited speakers.

Abstract Submission: Abstracts were solicited under thirteen areas of primary research interest (same as last year).  The list of 2004 topics is appended to the end of this report, including the number of abstracts submitted in each area.  In total, 982 requests were received for posters and platform talks (910 + 72 late).  This compares with 1016 in 2003, 1003 in 2002 and 966 in 2001.  There were 361 requests for platform presentations for 153 available slots, allowing accommodation of 42% of the requests (12% more than last year).

The choice of session topics worked well, although there is definitely a higher chance of being chosen for a platform presentation in some areas relative to others (see Table II below).  This is because of the constraints placed on the number of talks per session, which vary from 14 to 7.  The number of speakers for each sub-topic was roughly in proportion to the number of abstracts requesting platform talks in each sub-field, insofar as possible without combining different topical areas into a single platform session.  The most popular submission topics were Regulation of Gene Expression and Signal Transduction, followed by Neurogenetics/Neural Development, Neural Physiology/Behavior, Pattern Formation, and Cytoskeleton/Cellular Biology.

Posters:  We maintained, as much as feasible, the policy of the 2003 organizers in having a great deal of time devoted to poster sessions (15 hours in 2004 versus 17 hours in 2003). As in 2003, we devoted a large percentage of the time early in the meeting to blocks of poster time with author attendance.

Slide Sessions:  Initial selection of abstracts for platform talks was carried out by the platform session chairs from among the pool of submissions requesting consideration.   The primary criteria were novelty and scientific interest.   As program chairs we then reviewed the selections and made minor alterations to the list of selected speakers in order, as much as possible, to avoid choosing multiple speakers from the same laboratory (in some rare cases, we felt that selections from the same group were appropriate if the topics covered were truly distinct).

Workshops:  A total of 14 workshops were organized: 12 during the conference and 2 on the Wednesday, before the conference officially begins. This is over twice the number of workshops scheduled for the 2003 conference but similar to the 2002 total (13).   Reasons for this fluctuation are not obvious (but see below).  The organizer of the 'ecdysone' workshop (acting on behalf the 2003 attendees) requested a return to the traditional format of an all-day workshop preceding the meeting, and we acceded to this request.  The 'GPCR signaling' workshop was also scheduled for all day Wednesday; however, it had to be held off-site because the workshop organizer had misunderstood the timing and logistical requirements. Responsibility for organizing the program and content of each workshop was delegated to the workshop organizers.  Input from the conference organizers was limited to scheduling and other logistical issues (e.g. insuring against redundant talks etc.).   Previous organizers felt that issues related to the workshops were “the most time-consuming and vexing problems …. encountered”.  The 2004 organizing committee experienced similar pressures.  The solution to these problems is not altogether clear: one solution to misunderstandings about scheduling would be to notify workshop chairs at the outset of the approximate time and day on which th