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Message from the editors With the memories of a very successful combined 7th Congress of the Asian Pacific Society of Atherosclerosis and Vascular Disease (APSAVD) and the 36th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australian Atherosclerosis Society still fresh in our minds, Alison and I have decided that the last eNewsletter of the year should focus on the people and events that made Cairns 2010 so enjoyable. In addition, this month’s newsletter is packed with information about upcoming events.
Well done to all on the AAS and APSAVD organising committee, Richard O’Brian, Edward Janus, Stephen Li and last but not least, David Sullivan. Months of planning and many meetings later, and the Cairns Conference went off without a hitch! A fantastic program of informative talks was put together by the Program Committee. Highlights included seminal presentations by our invited overseas speakers, namely Profs Ginsberg, Chaithiraphan, Bukrinsky to name a few.
The Young Investigator sessions were well attended and the standard of presentation was very high, making judging all the more difficult this year. Congratulations to our amazing winner Belinda di Bartolo who not only won the AAS and APSAVD Young Investigator Awards but took out the BioAssayLINK Award as well! A great achievement that was well deserved. Congratulations also goes to Rosanna Chung, a first year Ph.D student from Jeffrey Cohn’s lab for her outstanding presentation that won her the Student Oral Prize. A joint prize also went to Denuja Karunakaran. Congratulations also to Christina Bursill from the HRI in Sydney for her excellent presentation and in being selected as joint winner of the APSAVD Young Investigator Award. Some of our winners have contributed small pieces of their “Cairns AAS experience” for our newsletter this month.
Welcome new additions to the AAS Executive Committee for 2011 are Peter Meikle from the BakerIDI, VIC and Heather Medbury from Westmead Hospital, NSW. As a vote could not split them, both have graciously accepted their new positions as Directors. By way of an introduction to their new roles, both agreed to write a small piece about their research interests for this edition of the eNewsletter. AAS Council has also welcomed Terri Allen from the BakerIDI as treasurer and Karin Jandeleit-Dahm from the BakerIDI in her new position President Elect.
Finally we would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and see you all again in 2011!
Judy de Haan and Alison Heather, November 2010
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Congratulations to all the committee, speakers and Jennifer Seabrook on a great meeting in Cairns. I really enjoyed the science and the social life - it was a pity I didn't have time to enjoy the location. Highlights for me were Jon Whitehead talking about adiponectin, Henry Ginsberg about aopB production and David Dunstan about sedentary time. I have put David's research into practice - physically moving every 20 minutes (although not on a treadmill). I hope he demonstrates soon that once/hour is just as good as 20 minutes seems to only produce two sentences! The draft Annual General Minutes are available by clicking here.
NHMRC are now out and it would appear atherosclerosis/cholesterol metabolism and heart disease did not figure as high as it should. Congratulations to those AAS members who were successful. And don’t forget – IAS Fellowship applications are open until December 17. Details on www.athero.org/ias-fellow.asp.
In 2011 the AAS Annual Scientific Meeting will be held in Adelaide hopefully in conjunction with ANZOS-the obesity society in October. My aim is to double the number of SA members of AAS from 8 to 16. More on this in the next newsletter.
Peter Clifton
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AAS ASM/APSAVD Congress Award winners
Our congratulations to all those who participated in the recent Annual Scientific Meeting, but especially to those who won the various awards, some of whom are highlighted here.
Rosanna Chung I am a first year PhD student in the Nutrition and Metabolism Group at the Heart Research Institute in Sydney. I work with A/Prof. Jeffrey Cohn studying the beneficial effects of dietary phospholipids on lipid metabolism in mice. I was lucky enough to be asked to present some of my PhD results in the Young Investigator’s session at the recent AAS conference in Cairns where I was pleased to be awarded the Student Oral Award for my presentation.
Although this is the first year I have been an active participant at an AAS meeting, I attended previous AAS conferences in Sydney and Melbourne as a junior Research Assistant. I supported my colleagues in addition to learning more about the way a scientific meeting works. I found that the AAS conference, where everyone is friendly, supportive and helpful was a great starting point for Australian scientists in the early years of their career. From my own viewpoint, it gave me the opportunity to meet and talk to a number of senior scientists |
