This event is designed to help new faculty (those within their first five years of appointment) and postdocs network, learn, and find support. In the past, topics covered in this event included tools and techniques for managing budgets effectively, tips for negotiating and establishing relationships with vendors, and tips on being a supportive mentor

Advance registration is required.
 

1. Introductions to first panel
2. 55 min Panel: setting up a lab with R01 and PUI 
   1. Panel: 
      1. Teresa Lee
      2. Nicole Crown
      3. Derek Applewhite
   2. Moderator
      1. Justin DiAngelo
3. 5 min break
4. Introductions to second panel
5. 55 min Panel: teaching at an R01 and PUI 
   1. Panel: 
      1. Rob Ward
      2. Julie Hall
      3. Te-Wen Lo
   2. Moderator
      1. Justin DiAngelo
6. 5 min break
7. 30 minutes networking break
   1. Breakout rooms
      1. Research-intensive (Rob Ward and Nicole Crown)
      2. 50/50 research/teaching (Teresa Lee and Justin DiAngelo)
      3. Teaching-intensive (Te-Wen Lo and Julie Hall)

This workshop provides attendees with important and useful information related to applying for research funding. Attendees hear talks from experienced investigators and program officers, and they have a chance to ask questions in a friendly, low-stress environment. Advance registration is required.

Panelists:

• Dr. Arcady Mushegian, National Science Foundation Program Director
• Dr. Bob Coyne, National Institute of General Medical Sciences Program Director - Developmental and Cellular Processes
• Dr. Victoria McGovern, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Senior Program Officer
• Dr. Janka Mátrai, European Research Council Executive Agency Scientific Officer 
• Etsuko Kifune, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Deputy Director, Washington, D.C. Office
• Dr. Christopher McMaster, Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Genetics Director

This event helps attendees make the most of the conference. Topics covered may include: introduction to organizers of the meeting, advice on having meaningful interactions in a virtual space, a chance to meet other attendees in an informal setting, and an introduction to events in the scientific and other programming. Registration required.

GSA Early Career Leadership Program members will join us in sharing how to get involved in the ECLP focusing on how the program has advanced their scientific skill sets and careers. GSA will walk through how and when to apply and showcase programming Early Career Scientists can participate in throughout the year. Registration required. For undergrads, grads and postdocs.

This multilingual networking event is where fellow #Worm21 participants who speak languages other than English will have a chance to network and talk science in their native language or language of choice with other participants. Join us for this exciting event to network in the language of your choice! Advance registration required.

A panel of individuals from multiple career paths will show the broad options available to those with a PhD. The career sectors highlighted will be: academic research, government research, science communication and writing, science policy, non-profit, business, outreach, and academic administration.

This event for graduate students and postdocs will show the broad options available to those with a PhD by hosting a panel of individuals from multiple career paths.

Moderator: Teresa Lee, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Panelists:
Swathi Arur, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Oliver Hobert, Columbia University
Jane Hubbard, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Skirball Institute
Jordan Ward, University of California, Santa Cruz

There are ~7000 rare human diseases, the majority of which are monogenic diseases. Less than 5% have therapies and for most, the mechanism of disease is not understood.  For the majority of disease genes, there exists a C. elegans ortholog. Modeling these rare diseases in C. elegans has revealed a better understanding of the cell biology of these mutations as well as novel therapies based on drug or genetic suppressor screens. This program will highlight a variety of approaches used to model these rare diseases. 
 

Speakers
Catharine Rankin, University of British Columbia, The success of the Canadian Rare Disease Models and Mechanisms program

Todd Lamitina: Lost in translation: new C. elegans models of repeat expansion disorders

Oliver Blacque:  Interpreting ciliopathy patient mutations using C. elegans knock-in models

Hiba Daghar, U. of Montreal, Developing C. elegans models for SRD5A3-CDG and Cori rare congenital diseases

Peter Kropp, NIDDK/NIH, Parsing allele-specific effects of a mitochondrial disease gene

This workshop will provide a practical guide for exploiting neuron-specific RNA seq data sets from CeNGEN (C. elegans Neuronal Gene Expression Map & Network). The CeNGEN project has produced a single-cell RNA-seq profile of every type (128) of neuron in the C. elegans nervous system. We will describe methods for generating and annotating these scRNA-Seq results, a website for data analysis (CeNGENapp), a complementary bulk RNA-Seq strategy for neuron-specific whole transcriptome data, and a computational approach that links neuron-specific gene expression to the wiring diagram.

COPAS VISION is a flow cytometer that can analyze and sort all stages of C.elegans and collect brightfield images of those worms. This lets the researcher screen through populations for rare variants, selecting differences in fluorescence levels, and dispensing worms to wells for various assays. All this and worm snapshots!

Also be sure and visit us at the Poster and Exhibits sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Not ready to publish yet, but curious about the peer review process? Join us for an overview of peer review presented by the Executive Editor of GSA Journals GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. Editors from multiple journals, including GENETICS, G3, eLife and Development  will then participate in a panel discussion answering attendee questions about the entire process—from submission to review to publication. Students and postdocs are invited to attend. All questions welcome!

Tracey DePellegrin, Executive Editor, GENETICS and G3, Publishing Overview

Panel Members
Swathi Arur, Editor, Development
David Fay, Senior Editor, G3
Howard Lipshitz, Editor in Chief, GENETICS
Piali Sengupta, Senior Editor, eLife

 

This workshop is dedicated to technological advances that allow precise control of gene expression and protein abundance. Ground breaking work by Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello on RNAi as a potent tool to silence gene expression has had a tremendous impact on the C. elegans field and beyond. Nevertheless, additional layers of manipulation are important to obtain experimental alternatives that often provide faster, more precise and/or reversible regulation of gene activity. Leading researchers involved in the development of tools for drug inducible gene expression, genome recombination and targeted protein degradation and localization will share their recent advances and experience with the audience through open discussion. 

Schedule

11:30 a.m. Introduction by Jordan D Ward, University of California-Santa Cruz
11:34 a.m. Mike Nonet, Washington University School of Medicine, RMCE and RMHE integration approaches and bipartite expression systems
11:41 a.m.  Mohammed Al Johani, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Efficient germline expression of transgenes
11:48 a.m. Justin Shaffer, Columbia University, FLExon: a FLoxed Exon approach to conditional gene expression
11:55 a.m. Lloyd Davis, University of Edinburgh, Controlling Gene Expression with Light
12:02 p.m. Peter Askjaer, Andalusian Centre for Developmental Biology, Expanding the FLP/Frt Toolkit
12:09 p.m. Theresa Gibney, University of Virginia, Genome engineering methods to visualize and manipulate endogenous proteins with cell-type specificity
12:16 p.m. Maria Sallee, Stanford University, Tissue-specific degradation of endogenous proteins using the ZIF-1/ZF system
12:23 p.m. Kelly Hills-Muckey, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Auxin-TIR1 pair mutation improves efficacy and specificity of the Auxin Induced Degron (AID) system
12:30 p.m. Open discussion

 

This workshop will be an interactive session with talks related to the breadth and depth of data in WormBase, tools for querying and analyzing data and community curation. We will discuss use cases and introduce users to new/improved community curation forms such as our Author First Pass and Phenotype submission forms. A highlight of this workshop will be a discussion about the Alliance of Genome Resources (Alliance; www.alliancegenome.org), of which WormBase is a founding member.

Schedule
11:30 a.m.  Magdalena Zarowiecki, EMBL-EBI, A whistle-stop tour of all the types of data you can find in WormBase

11:45 a.m.  Chris Grove, California Institute of Technology, Researching transcriptional regulation using WormBase transcription factors, TF binding sites and the modENCODE data

12:00 p.m.  Ranjana Kishore, California Institute of Technology, Comparative genomics and disease research using Alliance of Genome Resources

12:15 p.m.  Daniela Raciti, California Institute of Technology, How can you contribute? Community curation and tools, and the author-first-pass (AFP) pipeline

12:30 p.m.  Chris Grove, California Institute of Technology, Open Discussion / Q & A

This great new era of C. elegans natural biology has unearthed a new field in the community dedicated to understanding the role that microbes have played in sculpting the physiology of our beloved model system. In the wild, microbes not only act as potential food or pathogen, but can also colonize the intestines of C. elegans in simple communities (‘microbiomes’). Interest in this field has exploded since the first descriptions of these communities in wild C. elegans and introduction of the characteristic core microbiome in the first workshop, yet there is still great opportunity ahead. The aim of this third workshop is to provide an overview of this emerging field and the evolving directions, to facilitate cross-fertilization between the different approaches, and to introduce members of the C. elegans community to useful research pipelines and available resources. 

C. elegans researchers share the work they’re doing to address the lack of diversity within our field at various scientific stages. This session aims to include talks from individuals working at increasing diversity at the undergraduate research level through the professoriate. Our intention is that this session will generate communication within the community, spur individual ideas and actions, and express our plans to continue facilitating these conversations at future Worm meetings. We hope that highlighting these topics communicates that building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive scientific enterprise should be a priority for all scientists, and we want to give our community concrete ideas to take back to the classroom and the lab.

 Are you interested in learning to teach more effectively? Would you like to make your classroom more inclusive and engaging? Could you use guidance on how to implement active learning in your classes? Learn about the PALM Network (Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring), funded by the NSF and sponsored by the GSA and ASCB. This workshop is led by a current PALM Mentor and a former PALM Fellow. We will examine the benefits of active learning strategies, highlight advantages of belonging the PALM Network, describe examples of PALM projects, and discuss how to craft a successful application.

NemaLife, Inc invites you to experience how our hardware and software solutions can help improve the experimental throughput of your lab. We will demonstrate how our microfluidic platforms reduce the need for intensive manual assays. We will also highlight how our new software tools can speed up data analyses. Retire your worm picks with us! Stop by and visit us during the Poster and Exhibit sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday!

Over the past few years, a number of technological advancements to study the male C. elegans nervous system have been established. First, there is the male nervous system connectome, established by Scott Emmons and colleagues. Second, there are now tools to effectively manipulate gene function and visualize neuronal activity. Third, in unpublished work, the Hobert lab has established a multicolor atlas, NeuroPAL, that color-codes all male-specific neurons which hugely facilitates the identification of gene expression patterns, cell fate analysis and neuronal activity imaging in the male tail. Our panelists will discuss these tools to study the development and function of the C. elegans male nervous system. 
 

SCHEDULE

11.30 a.m, Scott W. Emmons, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Studies on the C. elegans male, how we got to where we are today

11.45 a.m. Arantza Barrios, University College London, Switching odour preferences through neuromodulation

12.00 p.m. Vladislav Susoy, Harvard University, Brain-wide functional analysis of mating behavior

12.15 p.m. Tessa Marie Tekieli, Columbia University, Visualizing the organization of the male-specific nervous system of C. elegans

12.30 p.m. Chen Wang, Columbia University, Mutant analysis of the DM-domain transcription factors using C. elegans male gene expression atlases

12.45 p.m. Questions from the audience

Imaging single molecules in intact cells has the potential to reveal features of gene expression that are not possible to measure using standard, ensemble-based strategies. While a number of model organisms have successfully employed aptamer-based transcript imaging systems (MS2, PP7, etc.) to track individual RNAs in real time, these approaches have had only limited success in C. elegans. This workshop intends to build momentum toward establishing these systems throughout C. elegans research community which will complement this powerful genetic model and enable aspects of RNA transcription, export, localization, translation, and turnover to be studied in detail.

Schedule

11:30am          Introduction: C.M. Hammell (CSHL), Sevinc Ercan (NYU, and Erin Osborne Nishimura (CSU).

11:35am          ChangHwan Lee (SUNY Albany), “Capturing dynamics of transcriptional bursting in vivo using the MS2 system.”

11:55am          Hongjie Zhang, Universidade de Macau, “PP7/PCP-based visualization of membrane-associated transcripts in epithelia.”

12:15pm         Wolfgang Keil, Curie Institute, “Monitoring spatiotemporal patterns of post-embryonic miRNA transcription using the MS2 system.”

12:35pm         Erin Osborne Nishimura, Colorado State University, “Best practices in mRNA live imaging.”

12:45pm         General Discussion and Panel Questions.

 

This Workshop will help with professional development of untenured faculty members, by helping to understand the special requirements to apply successfully for the 5-year CAREER Award to establish a strong independent research program. Several Program Directors (PDs) from the BIO Directorate of NSF (in cell and developmental biology) will discuss the Application for the CAREER Award.  All attendees should prepare a one-page research summary for a 5-year grant, which will be discussed and critiqued by the Directors and other attendees to help guide attendees towards planning and writing a proposal that can be highly reviewed at panel.

In order to get the most out of this workshop, attendees hoping to submit for the July 26 CAREER deadline this year should prepare ahead of time a one-page summary of your project, including your specific aims, and email it ahead of the meeting to:  mbuechne@nsf.gov with the subject heading “Worm CAREER summary”.  We will use these to help you determine to which program to submit.  In addition to the general presentation on Wednesday, we will also set up individual meeting times to go over your proposal.

Invited panel members will reflect on successes and challenges in the field and discuss the future of C. elegans research. Moderated by Julie Ahringer and Needhi Bhalla, the confirmed panellists include Kavita Babu, Arantza Barrios, Heather Bennett, Martin Chalfie, Andrew Fire, Robert Horvitz, Craig Mello, and Guangshuo Ou. The speakers will bring their unique perspectives to the discussion and will answer attendee questions submitted in advance of the session. We are hoping for a lively and interesting discussion that highlights the strengths and diversity of our field.

Ellen Gregory from UC Davis and Dr. Ken Dawson-Scully from Florida Atlantic University will discuss how humanized C. elegans models and novel assays are used for disease modeling with the goal of assaying the clinical significance of predicted disease-causing variants and for uncovering neurotoxins and biowarfare antidotes. 

Each year infections of animals and plants by parasitic nematodes cause many billions of dollars of agricultural damage. Over 1.5 billion people worldwide, particularly in developing nations, are infected by nematodes and suffer from the resulting debilitating diseases. Currently, only a few investigators address problems of parasitic nematodes using C. elegans. To encourage and facilitate more interactions between the C. elegans and parasitic nematode communities, workshops have been held for experts in plant, animal and human parasitic nematodes to speak on the life history and unique biology of these parasitic species and on outstanding issues in their field. A key goal of this workshop is to make C. elegans scientists aware of the issues and problems that parasitic nematode researchers face and pave the way for applying the powerful approaches and technologies that have advanced C. elegans research to parasitic nematodes.

Schedule
Session 1
3:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.  Vicky Hunt, piRNA-like small RNAs target transposable elements in the clade IV parasitic nematode Strongyloides ratti

4:00 p.m. -  4:10 p.m. Kyriaki Neophytou, Elucidating the interaction partners of an extracellular Argonaute protein

4:10 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.  Astra Bryant, Parasite-specific encoding of thermosensory signals by the human threadworm S. stercoralis

4:20 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Sophia Parks (Dillman lab), Parasitic nematode fatty acid- and retinol-binding proteins compromise host immunity by interfering with host lipid signaling pathways

4:30 p.m. - 4:40 p.m. Break, Q&A.

Session 2 

4:40 p.m. - 5:10 p.m.. Louise Atkinson, Advances in Nematode Parasite Omics Seeding Drug Discovery Pipelines

5:10 p.m. - 5:20 p.m. Stephen Doyle, Improving parasite genomes in the post-genome era

5:20 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Jonathan Stoltzfus, Utilizing transcriptomics to examine dauer and sex determination pathways in the human parasitic nematode Strongyloides stercoralis

5:30 p.m. - 5:40 p,m.. Break, Q&A.

Session 3 

5:40 p.m. - 6:10 p.m. Erik Anderson, The genetics of resistance in free-living and parasitic nematodes 

6:10 p.m. - 6:20 p.m. Jessica Knox, Exploiting C. elegans and Tractable Parasitic Nematodes for the Discovery and Characterization of Anthelmintics and Nematicides

6:20 p.m. -6:30 p.m. Nate Schroeder/David Hall, Developing WormAtlas beyond C. elegans

6:30 p.m. - 6:45 p.m. Closing remarks

Postdocs and junior faculty are invited to attend this workshop which will address the following topics:

• What is a PUI and how do I get a job at one?
• Navigating the PUI and getting tenure.