Posted on behalf of Rex Dalton.
The gorgeous warm winter weather of Southern California greeted an expected 8,000 attendees in San Diego for this year’s meeting, where most scientific sessions begin Friday February 19. Along with workshops and clinics on various specialties, Thursday was dominated by press conferences that will begin a cycle of such things carrying issues of scientific import to the world. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Bridging Science and Society.” Fittingly, the press conferences heralding scientific symposia were on translational medicine, dolphins and their capabilities for human research; green power, the census of marine life, and nuclear weapons – both reductions and verification.
This is the first time the AAAS has ever ventured to San Diego, the closest previously was about 100 kilometres north to Anaheim in 1999. The San Diego region boasts one of the nation’s most enviable scientific communities: the University of California at San Diego, always top ranked in biomedical research; UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a pioneer in marine research; San Diego State University, with a storied history of turning out undergraduates who have gone on to stellar academic careers; non-profit institutions like The Salk Institute for Biomedical Studies; and myriad biotech firms – both startups and established publicly traded firms – that make the region arguably the most envied biotech cluster.