The Liaison With Industry Committee (LWIC) met at the Experimental Biology 2004 meeting in Washington, DC. The committee is chaired by Glenn Reinhart and is composed of representatives from most of the active Society Sections, nominated to serve by their sections. The current committee membership is composed of Robert McCall (Neural Control and Autonomic Regulation); Stephen Wood (Comparative Physiology); Jeffrey J. Zachwieja (Environmental and Exercise Physiology); Peter Morsing (Renal); Christine Schnackenburg (Water and Electrolyte Homeostasis); William Martin (Central Nervous System); Joshua C. Anthony (Endocrinology and Metabolism); Pamela I. Hornby (Gastrointestinal); Jodie Krontiris-Litowitz (Teaching of Physiology); Chahraz Montrose-Rafizadeh (Cell and Molecular Physiology).
Workshop 2004: At EB 2004, the committee sponsored a workshop titled, "High Content Biology: Multiplexing in Cell Physiology," organized and chaired by Chahrzad Montrose-Rafizadeh, held on the afternoon of April 19, 2004. Speakers were A.F. Hoffman, P. Tagari, E.R. Mardis, and R. Zivin; topics covered included: functional characterization of GPCRs in models of obesity, signal transduction assays, high-throughput mutational profiling in human samples and assessing patterns of phosphorylation as a cellular response signature. This is the fourth workshop sponsored by the Committee since its reorganization and we are pleased to report that attendance was excellent.
The Fourth Annual Physiologists in Industry Mixer was held April 19, again with seemingly record-breaking attendance. Thanks once more to Linda Allen for sending timely email notices to those EB04 registrants who identified themselves as working in Industry.
Novel Disease Model Award: The award typically recognizes one graduate student ($500) and one postdoctoral fellow ($800) submitting the best abstract describing a novel disease model. Two students and six postdoctoral students applied (a total of eight abstracts were received in 2003 (for 2004), an increase from six in 2002). The top two abstracts included both a student and a post-doc and awards in both categories were made.
Workshop 2005 (IUPS): Since the LWIC wishes to continue its annual tradition of sponsoring high quality workshops/symposia relevant to industry and academic physiologists alike, the committee proposed a symposium on Metabolic Syndrome ("Metabolic Syndrome: From Clinical Insights to New Therapies") for IUPS 2005. The symposium was organized by Christine Schnackenberg and has commitments from four international scientists. The workshop and has been programmed by the International Scientific Programming Committee for IUPS 2005.
Miscellaneous: The committee remains committed to raising the profile and participation of Industry scientists in APS and recognizes Council's initiative in directing the Sections to place their LWIC representative on their respective programming committee. In addition, the LWIC will work with the APS Education Officer to provide additional membership benefits behind the Members Only firewall, including students and postdocs, and will also rebuild the LWIC website, providing information on careers in Industry-information that is important to trainees, their mentors and APS Leadership. Another objective is for the LWIC web page to provide web-based links to relevant APS Education and Careers pages, providing members a seamless access to the various and important perspectives regarding scientific research in the private sector.
Glenn A. Reinhart, Chair
Council Actions