April 12, 2005

The Carolina Center for Genome Sciences sponsored the first Developmental Biology Training Program Symposium on Friday, April 8, 2005 at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center. This event caps off a year of many notable achievements for the new DB training program, created by Victoria Bautch, Professor of Biology and Terry Magnuson, Professor of Genetics and CCGS Director. During the summer of 2004, the inaugural group of DB trainees was officially enrolled into the program. This group is made up of ten graduate students and three post-doctoral fellows representing a variety of labs focused on developmental biology. The trainees engage in a number of activities outside of their research including a bi-monthly journal club where they present and discuss topical papers or their own research projects. The DB trainees also plan to host a seminar on May 27 by Dr. Mark Krasnow, a renowned developmental biologist from Stanford University. These trainee activities, along with didactic requirements are coordinated by Bautch, the program director, and the rest of the DB Executive Committee which includes Magnuson, Dr. Steve Crews, Dr. Anthony LaMantia, and Dr. Mark Peifer. Magnuson and Bautch have also succeeded in obtaining a competitive institutional training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NICHD) to fund the training program beginning this summer.

The inaugural DB Symposium was a unique opportunity for all UNC developmental biologists to come together and share their common research interests. Approximately 100 scientists attended the all-day meeting consisting of two poster sessions and two platform sessions featuring talks by faculty, students and post-docs. The symposium culminated with a special keynote address given by Gail Martin, a prominent developmental biologist from the University of California at San Francisco who has made seminal contributions to the field of vertebrate embryogenesis. At the end of the day, Dr. Martin was also the guest of honor at a special post-symposium happy hour hosted by the DB trainees.

Special thanks go to the Symposium Organizing Committee:

C. Hawkins and Cara Marlow - CCGS staff
Anthony LaMantia, Terry Magnuson and Vicki Bautch - faculty advisors
Jeremiah Hinson, Lan Liang and Yukako Yokata - DB trainees