Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community Meeting 2021

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The central aim of this re-submission is to convene a meeting of the Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Community (AIRR-C) in December of 2021. The PI of the proposal, Dr. Lindsay Cowell, who is now the Chair of the AIRR-C's Executive Sub-committee (SC). The submission of this proposal was undertaken in close collaboration with the Members of the AIRR-C Meetings SC. A given AIRR comprises the antigen receptors on a population of T cells (TcRs), B cells (BcRs) and/or the antibodies (Abs) secreted by plasma- blasts and cells, and reflects the clonal composition of such populations. With the advent of high-throughput DNA sequencing, the AIRR-C emerged as a grass roots, multidisciplinary and inclusive scientific community dedicated to the development of methods and standards for the generation, analysis, storage and sharing of AIRR sequencing (AIRR-seq) data and its associated metadata, following FAIR-data principles and open- science practices. The 2020 meeting is the fifth AIRR-C meeting and will be held at Scripps Research in partnership with our Scripps host, Dr. Dennis Burton, and next door at the La Jolla Hilton hotel, on 8-11 December 2021. The Members of the AIRR-C Meetings SC comprise 3 women and 3 men at all stages of career from grad student to full professor, and from 6 different countries; their immunological expertise spans a wide range from immunogenetics to cellular immunology, bioinformatics and computational sciences. Together, they have prepared an exciting meeting with two Scientific sessions presented by 8 top scientists in their field, covering current advances made with AIRR-seq data in the Basic and Biomedical Sciences. And, to advance the AIRR-C's goals, two Challenge Sessions are planned to explore “Sustainability for the AIRR-C and its Mission” (a panel discussion) and the relevance of AIRR-seq data to “Systems Immunology” (with presentations by 4 outstanding scientists). As detailed in the proposal and letters of support, the meeting will provide opportunities for investigators and trainees to network, participate in AIRR-C Working Groups and learn in hands-on tutorials, poster presentations and platform presentations and advance the field of immune-repertoire profiling. The AIRR-C Meetings and Executive SCs have taken NIH's new requirement for a diversity plan to heart, and will commit the requested funds to providing travel and lodging support for two types of attendees from under-represented groups: (i) early-career scientists and their trainees, and (ii) attendees from local universities that support under-represented students (e.g., Charles Drew University in LA, the local Cal State Universities in Southern California). This plan includes outreach to these institutions, and a description for how early-career scientists, trainees and other students could become active participants within our scientific networks as members of our 7 Working Groups and/or 2 SCs. This conference is meant to provide a deep learning experience for all and a chance to strengthen our scientific networks; this is a proven approach to stimulating collaborative advances in biomedicine.