Young Investigator Meeting, Kolkotta, 2010

Dear Friends of the Bay Area YIM

I am writing to inform you about the second Young Investigator Meeting (Feb. 8-13, 2010) in Kolkata. This gathering should be of great interest to postdoctoral fellows who are working abroad or within India and might be potentially interested in an academic career in India. The meeting also will be attended by Indian junior faculty, and we seek applications from this group as well. The meeting will take place in an attractive resort along the Ganges River in the viciniity of Kolkata. Travel will be covered or mostly covered from a grant (depending upon the final funding).

Information on the meeting, the invited participants, meeting site and application information can be found at:

http://www.indiabioscience.org/yim

In brief, this meeting follows upon a very successful first Young Investigator Meeting held in Kerala in 2009. The response to this
meeting was extraordinarily positive, and it was very motivating and informative for both the young and senior scientists who attended. There was high demand for a similar meeting in 2010. The main attendees of the 2010 meeting will be 30 postdoctoral fellows and 30
Indian junior faculty (both picked through an application and selection process) and a distinguished group of international
scientists, senior Indian scientists, and leaders in Indian government and international granting agencies (see web site for details). The meeting will consist of a combination of science as well as mentoring on issues of how to set up a successful laboratory (through talks, panel discussions and poster sessions). Importantly, the meeting provides a venue for young people (the future leaders of Indian biology) to meet each another and discuss their questions with scientific leaders who are interested in mentoring young people. For the 2010 meeting, we will include a new 1 day satellite meeting where invited postdoctoral fellows will learn more about jobs in India and interact with institute/university directors and chairs.

As an important component of this meeting, we are seeking outstanding postdoctoral researchers who might consider applying for jobs and
setting up their laboratories India. These postdoctoral scientists will present their work (with brief talks and posters) and will benefit enormously from the opportunity to meet young Indian investigators, learn more about the current environment for scientific
research in India, and hear about developments that will take place in the near future. We would greatly appreciate if you could bring this
meeting to the attention of other postdoctoral researchers at your institution or elsewhere. We also are seeking outstanding junior
faculty in India (or abroad who might return to India). If you know of such individuals, please bring this meeting to their attention as well.

If you have questions, please email the organizers, Deepak Barua, Sandhya Koushika (NCBS), Shubha Tole (TIFR,
Mumbai), or Ron Vale (UCSF) individually or through the meeting contact at Yimeet2010@ncbs.res.in

Application are through the web site: http://www.indiabioscience.org/yim

As an additional note, this web will be fully functional in about 4-6 weeks, and it will hopefully become a central hub of information and interactions.

Best regards,

Ron

Ron Vale
Chair, Dept. of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology
Investigator, HHMI
University of California, San Francisco