Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Lipids are essential for plant growth, development, and environmental adaptation. Because of this and their high energy value, lipids also serve as important renewable resources for human benefit. Agriculturally, they serve as a critical source of food, feed, biofuel, and bioproducts. We have a critical need in plant biology to respond to a growing need for food and renewable fuels worldwide. To accomplish this, advances must be made in the production of high-value plant products while protecting plant development and enabling adaptation to a changing environment. The Gordon Research Conference and Seminar on Plant Lipids; Structure, Metabolism, and Function is an important forum that brings together world-class plant scientists to make progress on this critical need. To that end, it is the goal of the 2023 meetings to bring together visionary leaders, stakeholders, and academic scientists to discuss the latest findings and technological advances in basic plant lipid research and identify how these discoveries can be leveraged to create new opportunities for human benefit, including the production of high-value chemicals for human health and industry. The meetings will be held in Galveston, Texas from January 29th to February 2nd, 2023. USDA funding will allow the registration of key speakers who will discuss their views of the field's future and participate in mentoring early-career scientists. Finally, USDA funds will also allow registration of the talk selection committee, whose diversity of research, nationality, and gender helps us ensure that our conferences encompass our whole field.
Animal Health Component
44%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
46%
Applied
44%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
1. To increase participation by students, post-docs, and underrepresented groups that will improve the resilience of our research community. The pandemic has fractured our communities, particularly the early career researchers who have not had the chance to interact with the community in four years, due to the cancellation of the biennial Gordon Conference and most other in-person events.2. Create a dynamic, inclusive environment in which early-, mid-, and late-career scientists from industry, government, and academia of all ethnicities, nationalities, and genders feel welcome to share their newest, unpublished research for the benefit of the field.
Project Methods
The Gordon Research Seminarwill begin with a Chairs' introduction, the keynote talk (45 min, 15 min discussion), and a poster session (1.5 hours). Saturday evening and Sunday morning will have two scientific sessions of approximately two hours each and including eight talks selected from abstracts. Each talk will be approximately 20 minutes with 10 minutes of discussion. On Sunday, a career-guidance event will start at 1:30 pm and last for 1 hour. All space in the GRS is reserved for early-career researchers submitting abstracts, with strong recruitment from underrepresented groups.The Gordon Research Conferencewill begin the same evening (Sunday, Jan 29st, 2023) at 7:30 pm with a welcome by the chair/co-chair and GRC site staff followed by the first scientific session. Scientific sessions take up the bulk of the days with morning sessions from 9:30 am - 12:30 pm and evening sessions from 7:30 - 9:30 pm. Discussion leaders will present a 5-minute overview at the start of each session. Invited and selected speaker talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Eight of the nine speaking sessions will include 20-minute talks selected from submitted abstracts. These abstracts will be chosen to represent a range of career level, academic, industry, and government research affiliations, and expertise, with a mind towards balancing all types of diversity (scientific topic, gender, ethnicity, nationality, lab affiliation). The Monday morning session will also include poster lightning talks. To encourage broad availability of speakers after their sessions, Speaker interaction tables will be set at each meal. On Monday and Tuesday mornings, we will incorporate lightning talks from poster presenters to encourage broad participation in the poster sessions. Also on Monday, after lunch we will host a "Power Hour" on "Diversity Advocacy". Free time is allocated every afternoon from 1 pm until 4 pm to promote informal conversations among the conference participants. The afternoon free time is a unique feature of Gordon Conferences and has been extensively used in our community to have small collaborative meetings and shared outings, both of which are exceptional opportunities for networking. On Wednesday, the lunch will designate several tables as "Career Mentoring Tables". These will create a time and space for early career researchers to ask about next stages for careers. Creating a space and time indicated for these questions has been shown to be an advantage for underrepresented minorities. Finally, a business meeting will take place on Wednesday evening to discuss conference continuation and selection of the future site and next vice-chairs. (The vice-chair of this conference will serve as the next conference chair.) More details about each of the workshop segments in bold italics above follows below the program, including dissemination plans.SUNDAYSession 1 - Membrane Contact Sites and Their FunctionsMONDAYSession 2 - Lipids on the Edge, Cutin, Suberin, and WaxesPower Hour details followPoster session 2 hours.Session 3 - Lipid Synthesis and ModificationTUESDAYSession 4 - Lipid-Based SignalingPoster session (2 hours)Session 5 - Innovative Technical Advances in Lipid AnalysisWEDNESDAYSession 6 - Isoprenoids, sterols, and lipid-derived productsPoster session (2 hours)Session 7 - Storage Lipids for Food, Feed, and BiofuelsTHURSDAYSession 8 - Lipid Dynamics - Synthesis, Flux, and Degradation, Thursday morningPoster session (2 hours)Session 9 - Gaps in Translating Basic Lipid Science for Human Benefit, Thursday evening?Poster Presentations Both the GRS and the GRC will host poster presentations, which are ideal for in-depth discussions in a less formal setting. Poster lightning talks on Monday will highlight poster presenters. The Presentation Selection Committee (chaired by the Vice-Chair of the GRC) will organize the GRC poster sessions.Speaker Interaction Tables Following each session, speakers will be asked to sit at defined locations during the next meal with no more than two speakers per table (each table seats 10). This creates additional opportunities for early-career researchers and others interested in continuing to discuss the research from the session to visit with the speakers.Power Hour We will host a "Power Hour" after lunch on the topic, "Diversity Advocacy". The "Power Hour" is intended to address issues that affect underrepresented minorities and genders in science. Underrepresented scientists are often at a disadvantage compared with majority peers, and this session will be set up to directly help address this problem. We will break out into small groups with mixed experience levels to discuss multiple topics surrounding diversity advocacy (e.g., mentoring, conflict management, inclusive practices, networking, team science, institutional change, and hiring). Each topic is supported by a 1-page evidence sheet beginning with the benefits of including diverse identities, challenges for diverse identities in the context of the topic, and evidence-based solutions. The session will be in a round table format and discussions are expected to provide specific intervention actions, some of which can be immediately practiced throughout the conference (especially networking). The GRC will iterate the lessons learned from a Plant Biology 2022 workshop hosted by Rebecca Roston, where additional centralization of the workshop was suggested. Results will be assessed through a survey available by QR code.Career Mentoring Tables During the lunch following the "Isoprenoids, Sterols, and Lipid-derived Products" session on Wednesday, we will have "mentoring tables" that will specifically focus on career advice. Volunteers fromindustry, government, and academia willhead tables when setting aside specified time for informal mentoring opportunities helps eliminate barriers for underrepresented minorities.