David W Smith Workshop on Malformations/Morphogenesis

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The David W. Smith Annual Workshops on Malformations and Morphogenesis have been held for 24 years and bring together a mix of dysmorphologists, embryologists, anatomists, geneticists, and others who work on developing a better understanding of how human malformations occur and there underlying mechanisms of morphogenesis. The workshops are held annually and were initiated in celebration of the career of David W. Smith who was the father of human clinical dysmorphology and first initiated these meetings. Meetings are held over approximately five days typically on an academic campus in the summer and have an attendance of 120-140 individuals who are selected following submissions of abstracts and reviewed by the scientific program committee. The workshop is intended to be an interactive exchange and thus is limited only to those presenting that year. Approximately every five years the meetings have been held internationally but most meetings are in the United States or Canada. Each year three to five central topics are selected by the organizers; the selection of topics takes into account when the topic had last been a focus, timeliness based on new scientific developments, and new fields. As an example, this year will focus on brain development, craniofacial development, urogenital development, and epigenesis, additional sessions are devoted to more general issues of malformation and morphogenesis and based on the abstracts submitted that year. The meetings consist of a workshop format in which short presentations of hypothesis driven findings are then followed by an intense discussion period. The meetings have a long history of wide-ranging and stimulating discussion and have provided an especially important focus for the development and recruitment of fellows and junior faculty into the field of malformation and morphogenesis. This proposal is a request to provide continuing support for these meetings in the form of travel stipends for fellows, junior faculty, and a select number of plenary speakers. These meetings have had a history of continued success based on the dedication of the participants and the goal of this proposal is to provide additional stability with a particular emphasis on the involvement of new members of this research investigative community.