The ISSCR Annual Meeting will be held In Boston, MA in June.
In advance of the meeting I was looking through the Preliminary Program that showed up in my mail box and then I checked out the confirmed speakers page on the web.
What a cool lineup of speakers, I thought, but something seemed different….at first I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The list of speakers includes mostly relatively new people who did not speak last year or the year before (see last year’s program and the one before that).
That was it!
No Rudy Jaenisch, no Irv Weissman, etc this year as top speakers….puzzling.
ISSCR having an annual meeting with neither Jaenisch nor Weissman listed as speakers is notable. Has that ever happened before? There are many other bigwigs who often speak at the ISSCR meeting who are also not listed…I suppose they could still speak via a selected abstract, but still this is really different…
I asked a top leader in the stem cell field about the lineup of speakers for this year’s ISSCR Annual Meeting and they responded:
“As the new ISSCR President, Yamanaka has catalyzed a refreshing new lineup of speakers for the annual meeting this year.”
ISSCR 2013 has certainly broken with tradition with its list of mostly fresh blood as top speakers.
Interesting to note there is not a single speaker from industry among them.
Excellent point, Lee. I think ISSCR needs to open up to industry and include leaders in the translational sector.