Signal Transduction: Receptors, Mediators and Genes 2002 meeting

The STS council decided to once again distribute STS stipends for a total amount of 2,500,-- EUR. The favorable financial situation of the STS enables the Society to support up to 10 young STS members (diploma or doctoral students) by a travel grant of 250,-- EUR each. The application deadline for STS-stipends is September 15, 2002. The successful applicants will be notified and personally awarded during the STS Meeting in Weimar.

Applicants must be diploma- or doctoral-students, a letter of confirmation from the head of the department and a copy of immatriculation certificate is required. Applicants must also be members of the STS. Applications must be accompanied a curriculum vitae, a description of the current project (no more than two pages) and an abstract to be presented at the Meeting. Applications should be sent to the head of the grant comittee, Gaby-Fleur Böl (boel@www.dife.de - Fax: +49-33200/88-419).

The address for postal mail is:

Dr. Gaby-Fleur Boel
German Institute of Human Nutrition
Dep. Vitamins and Atherosclerosis
Arthur-Scheunert-Allee 114-116
D-14558 Potsdam-Rehbruecke
Germany

Poster presentations will once again be particularly attractive in 2002. First of all, there will be ample space for all posters to remain mounted throughout the conference in conjunction with the sponsors exhibition. Second, once again, all posters may be introduced to the plenum in the famous 'one minute - one transparency (no slide)' session and third, five poster prizes will be awarded (first prize: 250,-- EUR, second prize: 200,-- EUR, third prize: 150,-- EUR, fourth prize: 100,-- EUR and fifth prize: 50,-- EUR. Since it is the policy of the STS to particularly encourage and support young scientists, the council decided that chairpeople and heads of departments or institutes are not eligible for a poster award.

Furthermore, all poster authors are encouraged to submit an outline of their presented data on a PC/IBM-compatible floppy disk. We will provide you with a frame of seven 'slides' which you may fill with your contribution. This presentation will then be included into the Meeting CD (see below).

The STS council decided to produce a Meeting CD that will include the program and all abstracts, the list of meeting participants, the General Assembly agenda and protocol, as well as pictures and video-clips taken at the meeting. The CD will also contain Powerpoint presentations of talks and posters (of course only of those for which explicit permission was provided along with submission). The CD may be purchased in advance with your registration for 35,-- EUR (including mailing) and will be distributed shortly after the meeting.

The industrial exhibition of sponsoring companies will take place in an approximately 400 square meter area together with the poster exhibition in order to concentrate and to facilitate interactions between the conference participants and the industry. Sponsoring companies of the STS meeting as well as companies who would like to support alternative activities such as organization of a dinner tutorial, sponsoring of scientific awards, banner commercials, etc. are kindly requested to contact Ralf Hass (rh@sigtrans.de) for further information.

Poster Size: The format for posters is DIN A0 in portrait orientation (width: 841 mm, height: 1189 mm)

All presentations will be given as plenary lectures/short presentations in the main conference hall. Each session will be opened by an introductory overview of 20 minutes. The speakers will be selected by the chairpeople of a session and the program committee. If you would like to suggest potential overview speakers (including yourself) for one of the workshop topics listed below, please indicate this by email to Karlheinz Friedrich (khf@sigtrans.de).

Due to time restrictions, a limited number of abstracts will be selected for oral presentations of 10 minutes plus 5 minutes of discussion. The oral presentations should thematically be related to the Workshop Topics They will be selected according to the author's indicated preferences by the Workshop chairpeople on the basis of scientific quality and consistency with the program.

The Workshop sessions will also include presentations of 10-15 minutes by sponsoring companies on innovative products for signal transduction research. These presentations will conclude each session to allow further discussions with the company's representatives during the following breaks.

For the 2002 Meeting in Weimar, we launched another innovative highlight: A workshop entitled 'Bench to Business'. It is intended to provide a platform for planned projects, new startup companies, for developing and established companies to discuss their aims and fears about combining academia and business or about leaving one for the other. We hope that we will manage to attract representatives from many companies that find their basis or their costumers in signal transduction research. For further information on special rates for contribitors to this event, please contact Ralf Hass at rh@sigtrans.de (applicable to company representatives only).

All poster accepted contributions will be placed throughout the whole meeting in an area immediately connected to the conference hall together with the sponsors' exhibition. This comfortable room will also be the major get-together site during the coffee breaks. Poster viewing and discussion is scheduled for Thursday and Friday. In addition, posters may be presented to the plenum in a separate Poster Workshop as a 'one-minute presentation' (one minute - one (A4) transparency - no slide).

For detailed information in German about traveling by plane or by car and the location of the Conference Venue please refer to the Hilton Weimar Website (http://www.hilton-weimar.de). For special inquiries about local peculiarities, contact Karlheinz Friedrich (khf@sigtrans.de).