Tuesday, April 29, 2025
4/29/2025
2025 Directed Cell Migration Gordon Research Conference and Gordon Research Seminar - PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Directed cell migration plays central roles in shaping tissues during development, in tissue renewal and immune surveillance post-development, and in the most dangerous aspects of cancer progression. This application seeks funding for the 2025 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Directed Cell Migration, which will be held from January 11-17 at the Renaissance Il Ciocco in Barga, Italy. For the past twenty years, this biannual meeting has provided the intellectual home for a highly diverse and international group of scientists who study how cells migrate and sense direction in all the physiological contexts described above and who do so using a variety of approaches. The attendees include developmental and cell biologists, immunologists, cancer biologists, bioengineers, applied mathematicians, and physics, who all come together to discuss their latest unpublished data, learn from one another, and generate the types of novel hypotheses and collaborations that speed discovery. The meeting also provides a key training opportunity for the students and postdocs who are the future of our discipline by allowing them to receive feedback on their research from leaders in the field and build their professional networks. The 2025 GRC will explore such topic as: (1) how cells sense and interpret a complex set of chemical and physical guidance cues to find their destination; (2) how these external stimuli are linked to internal cell responses; (3) how a self-organizing and dynamic cytoskeleton is deployed in time and space to ensure a directional output; and (4) how collectively migrating cells communicate with one another to coordinate their movements. The meeting will feature 26 invited speakers who are a mixture of established community leaders and new rising stars, as well as 20 short talks and 24 poster preview talks chosen from the abstracts that will allow students, postdocs, and junior faculty members to gain broad exposure for their work. The program also includes 4 poster sessions to facilitate deep conversations about ongoing research. We will further engage trainees in the meeting by holding a GRS on the weekend before the GRC. This pre-meeting is run by trainees for trainees, and includes 2 invited faculty speakers, 12 talks chosen from the abstracts, and 2 poster sessions. The GRS not only allows trainees to present their work in a safe and relaxed setting, but also builds a sense of confidence and camaraderie among the group that tends to make them bolder and more interactive in the main GRC. Finally, the meeting will feature two activities to strengthen our community – a GRC Power Hour, in which participants discuss how to overcome challenges faced by women and other underrepresented groups in science, and a workshop on scientific storytelling, in which participants will learn to communicate their science to the public in a clear and engaging way. Due to the central role cell migration plays in many normal and pathophysiological contexts and because of the wide range of systems covered at this meeting, this conference aligns with the missions of several NIH institutes, including NICHD, NIAID, and NCI, among others.
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