2006 Visual System Development Gordon Conference

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Visual System Development is a biennial meeting that brings together investigators using invertebrate (primarily Drosophila) and vertebrate animal models to study the development and evolution of the eye and visual system. An important impetus for the organization of this meeting was a seminal paper from Walter Gehring's laboratory in Basel, Switzerland published in 1994, which showed that an orthologous gene (eyeless/Pax6) specifies eye formation in flies and vertebrates, respectively. Over the subsequent years, this meeting has provided an exciting and unique forum in which to explore the similarities - and differences - between vertebrate and invertebrate visual systems. The goal of this GRC is to foster an appreciation of common principles that mediate the construction and function of the visual system in diverse organisms and to share the latest exciting new ideas and concepts. The format of the GRC meetings provides a highly interactive and stimulating venue for cross-fertilization of ideas and for developing new collaborations. The scientists who share a common interest in the development of this sensory system, but who work on diverse model systems, from flies to mammals, have few other opportunities to interact scientifically, because other relevant professional meetings are focused on either a specific organism (e.g., the Drosophila meeting, the Zebrafish meeting) or a much broader field (e.g., the Society for Neuroscience, the Association for Research on Vision and Ophthalmology). The Visual System Development GRC has established a reputation as the leading conference in its field. The previous Visual System Development meetings have all been held in the United States, but the 2006 meeting will be at the GRC site in Italy. This venue provides an opportunity to increase the participation of European and Asian scientists, and this will broaden and enhance the diversity and quality of this conference. The current proposal requests funds to help defray the travel and conference fees for US scientists. In the selection of speakers and discussion leaders careful attention has been paid to gender and ethnic diversity and to the inclusion of scientists at various stages of their careers, all of whom have exciting new work to share with their colleagues.