2009 Biennial Meeting Success

Dear Colleagues,

Larry and I have heard from many of you who attended the SSHD conference in Ann Arbor this year that it was a tremendous success. We were certainly pleased to have excellent weather and very few travel problems were reported. For those of you who were part of our scientific program, we congratulate you on creating a meeting of high scholarly quality. I believe our junior scholars found it a rare opportunity to meet with our more senior colleagues in both formal and informal settings.

The meeting began with a plenary session on Gene x Environment influences on later life human development. Participants included Alex Burt from Michigan State University, Danielle Dick from Virginia Commonwealth, Michael Meany from McGill and Steve Suomi from NIH. Our keynote on Sunday was Jane Costello who provided lessons learned from her longitudinal Smoky Mountain Study. Monday’s plenary symposium explored the exciting opportunities offered by the newly emerging field of Systems Science. Participants included Patty Mabry from NIH, Hazir Rahmandad from VPI, Jennifer Brown Urban from Montclair State

University, Nathaniel Osgood from the University of Saskatchewan, Rosalind King and Jonathan King, both from NIH.

Monday’s keynote speaker was K. Warner Schaie who offered an overview of findings from the Seattle Longitudinal Study. We also enjoyed 6 parallel symposia over the course of the meetings and 77 posters. In other parts of the website you should be able to view additional details about all presentations ( i.e. plenary sessions, keynote addresses, parallel symposia and posters) and photos from the meeting.

The work of several of our members was recognized with SSHD awards. These included: Early Career Award, Kira Birditt, Ph.D , University of Michigan; Best Completed Dissertation Award, Lang Ma, M.D., Ph.D, Tufts University; Best Dissertation Plan Award, Scott Trudeau, Boston College and Neda Bebiroglu, Tufts University.

And finally, the meeting was an important transitional time with Toni Antonucci passing the gavel to Larry Schiamberg, our new president.