2012 GREAT Group and GRAND Joint Annual Meeting: “Leading Change, Looking Forward:New Visions for Tomorrow’s Biomedical Science”

This year’s AAMC (American Association of Medical Colleges) meeting will feature a keynote address by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At plenary sessions, Drs. Keith Yamamoto, University of California, San Francisco, and Roberta Ness, University of Texas School of Public Health, will speak on new and different research education models; George Dyson, science historian, John Wilbanks, Kauffman Foundation, and Anita de Waard, Elsevier Labs/University of Utrecht, will address issues of accelerating discovery in a digital universe; and Lilly Marks, University of Colorado, will discuss innovative models for funding research and training. The meeting will also feature Drs. Sally Rockey & Reed Tuckson presenting on recent NIH reports on the future research workforce and diversity. We invite you to take part in one of four pre-meeting workshops. All meeting participants are invited for a special late-afternoon and evening event at the campus of Vanderbilt University.

We, the GREAT Group and GRAND Chairs, invite medical school research and research training leaders to join us at what will be an outstanding and timely meeting – addressing some of the most challenging issues facing biomedical research and education at our academic medical institutions today. The meeting will be held in Nashville from September 20 to September 22, 2012. Befitting the challenges of our times, this conference will bring together for the first time since 2003 the GRAND and GREAT Groups. This fully integrated program was developed by a single planning committee made up of members representing all GREAT Group and GRAND constituencies, including leaders of graduate, postdoctoral, and physician-scientist research training and of basic and clinical research.

The Group on Research Advancement and Development (GRAND) is an AAMC professional development group for Research Deans and Deans of Clinical Research. The mission of GRAND is to provide a national forum for the promotion, support, development, and conduct of biomedical research in medical schools and teaching hospitals, through the exchange of information and the examination of issues critical to the research enterprise.

Graduate Research, Education, and Training (GREAT) Group provides professional development to, and fosters the exchange of information and ideas among, the faculty and administrative leaders of biomedical PhD, MD-PhD, and postdoctoral programs. The Group functions as a national forum to help these programs achieve their goal of educating successful biomedical researchers.