2013 Korean-American Bio-Medical Scientists Symposium (2013 KABMS) was held as 4th West Gulf Coast Regional Conference to provide a great opportunity for Korean-American biomedical scientists around the West Gulf Coast Region to expose themselves to the most current trends in biomedical science, as well as to meet all Korean-American biomedical scientists from different institutions around the vast west gulf coast (Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama) region share scientific knowledge. And, also aim to promotion of new KSEA memberships recruit in South Texas Chapter by increasing the visibility of KSEA.
The 2013 KABMS was successfully held at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas Medical Center at Houston, Texas on November 2 (Sat), 2013 with a total of 96 people registered and 110 in attendance. Attendances are from Korea, many institutions of west gulf coast area including The University of Texas, Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas A&M University, UT Medical Branch at Galveston, Methodist Hospital, University of Houston, Rice University.
The symposium was started with 3 keynote speeches in the morning. Dr. Jay H. Chung from National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute give a presentation about Regulation of longevity protein sirt1 by energy. Second speaker was Dr. Sang Eun Lee, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He gave an excellent talk entitled “Regulation of Repair pathway choice”. The third key note speaker was Dr. Charles C. Chung at Cancer Genomics Research Laboratory, SAIC-Frederick, Inc. He gave a presentation about new method for identifying markers in testicular cancer at his talk entitled “Meta-analysis identifies four new loci associated with testicular cancer”. In the afternoon session, Dr. Kevin Morano, UT Medical School at Houston, gave a practical advice to young investigator about how to apply impressive grant proposals and develop their career to survive in US as an foreign scholar based on his long been experience as a faculty with his speech titled “Scientific Grant Application and Survival ”. And following session, we had a “short talks sections” to provide opportunities for post-doc and students to present their scientific achievement to all participants within short time, within 10 min. To encourage to participation, the highest poster award was selected from oral presenters.
Apart from the above scientific and career development speeches, Dr. Jaehoon Ryu at UT Arlington, introduced various activities and vision of 42nd KSEA in 2013 to 2014. He specially emphasized that KSEA is planning and providing several programs for encouraging Korean young investigators to participate and improving network in various field of scientific societies in US.
In addition to oral presentation, total 40 poster presentations were highly interactive program between participants. Three of Students and Post-Docs oral presenters were awarded by GenDepot and KSEA and also more posters were cash awarded ($100/each). From the response of symposium attendees, they deeply appreciated the symposium contents, committees, and sponsors, especially KUSCO and KSEA-HQ. Forty four renewed and new memberships among participated scientists/ physicians were joined to KSEA member through this event.
To preparing 2014 KABMS, the six of scientists were newly volunteered for the 2014 KABMS executive committee. The symposium objectives, networking between scientists from the Korea and US, were well fully accomplished. We are already started to preparing 2014 KABMS symposium and we believe this symposium will contribute to promote strong interaction between the visiting scholars from the Korea and the Korean-American scientists at the West Gulf Coast Area.