POPULATION, EVOLUTIONARY, AND QUANTITATIVE GENETICS MEETING

Although most of the central venues of TAGC revolve around the long-standing model-organism meetings, the broad and overlapping fields of population, evolutionary, and quantitative (PEQ) genetics span these systems and more. Thus, in the interest of developing a fully comprehensive genetics conference, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) will also convene the first joint meeting for researchers in the latter fields.

Topics will range from population genomics to molecular evolution to the dissection of the determinants of quantitative-trait variation, with equal emphasis placed on both model and non-model organisms across the Tree of Life. PEQ has a long history of both applied and theoretical research, and both will be an integral part of this meeting.

The intention here is to promote a strong cross-disciplinary network of colleagues performing both theoretical and empirical work. The meeting will consist of a series of short talks, poster sessions, and plenary talks, and will be dovetailed with the model-organism venues to facilitate maximum interaction among those with similar conceptual interests. As many as 90 oral presentations will be delivered directly in the PEQ meeting, with dozens to hundreds of others with direct connections being given in the other model-organism sub-meetings. Time in the schedule will be set aside for the usual GSA-sponsored career-development workshops, including education-oriented, grant-writing, and networking sessions focused on strategies for building successful teaching methodologies and lasting collaborations.

GSA plans for PEQ to become the premier, regular gathering of graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and established scientists in these central areas of genetics, ideally being established as another of the several periodic meetings sponsored and managed by the GSA. After nearly 100 years of research in population, evolutionary, and quantitative genetics, the time for holding such an exciting meeting is long overdue.

You won't want to miss this meeting where you can build relationships that are key to future collaborations.