For more than 100 years, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) has held its annual general meeting. This year, ASM makes its way to Philadelphia, birthplace of the nation, May 17-21 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for its 109th general meeting.

The organization reports general attendance jumped to more than 10,000 attendees in 2008 and it has every expectation of exceeding that number this year.

"Attendees come from all areas of our industry and represent key opinion leaders who are there to educate themselves on products and technological advances, and to scout suppliers. Moreover, if you're looking to recruit new employees or, better still, to initiate customer loyalty right from the very start, you should be aware that many of our attendees are students or recent graduates looking to get their feet wet in the industry," reads an exhibitor prospectus published by ASM.

Programming Variety

In addition to attracting delegates via its scientific program, ASM said attendees will flood the exhibit hall with traffic-enhancing events that include a town square, e-central, poster sessions, an exhibitor presentation theater and more. Rounding out the meeting will be special breakfasts, the food court and grand prize raffles.

The general meeting covers fundamental microbial cell biology, genetics and physiology, environmental and applied microbiology and microbial ecology, pathogenesis and clinical microbiology and infectious diseases. ASM reported its goal is to provide a program with breadth and depth showcasing state of the art science, and a program that both updates experts in their own field and allows attendees to make excursions into areas of microbiology outside of their realms of expertise.

Meeting Objectives

The ASM general meeting scientific program offers an opportunity for attendees to increase their knowledge of microbiology and:

• provides a forum to share new technologies, new practices and developments in clinical microbiology;
• provides critical information regarding physiology, genetics and cell biology of microbes;
• provides key updates in the areas of microbial pathogenesis, environmental microbiology and applied microbiology; and
• provides new data on the roles of microbes in health and disease, and aspects of host immunity to infectious diseases.

Biofilms in Focus

Birgit M. Pruess, PhD, assistant professor of microbial physiology at North Dakota State University in Fargo is a regular attendee at ASM. "Being a microbiologist, this is one of my most important meetings where I get to meet the largest number of friends and colleagues," she told ADVANCE. "I can also present my research to a broad range of other scientists and have usually collected great ideas with respect to continuing my project or publishing the results."

Dr. Pruess is presenting, "Life Is All About Choices: Do I Want to Swim or Stick to a Surface?" The presented work constitutes a collaborative effort between a multidisciplinary team of biologists, computer scientists and materials chemists. The major outcome from the point of view of the biologists and chemists was the identification of high temperature and nutrient rich medium as the key variables responsible for the formation of a large amount of biofilm.

Fighting Infections

"Getting the Leap on Drug-resistant Infections," will be presented by Ulysses Sallum, PhD, research fellow at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Dr. Sallum said he is attending this year's meeting to learn of the most current developments in the antimicrobial, diagnostic and infectious disease fields. "The ASM meeting is the largest gathering of microbiologists in the world. What better place to network, discuss ideas and advance our fields?"

Register Now

It's not too late to register for the meeting. For more information, visit www.asm.org.

Matthew T. Patton (mpatton@advanceweb.com) is editor of ADVANCE.