150 Attend Plant Biology Symposium

The ninth annual Symposium in Plant Biology was held on October 8th and 9th in the Integrated Science Building at UMass Amherst . The symposium, entitled “Auxin and Expansion”, examined the essential hormone auxin and its relationship to fundamental processes of growth. The symposium was sponsored by the UMass Plant Biology Graduate Program and co-sponsored by the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology at the University of Nottingham, UK. The meeting was international, with six of the thirteen invited speakers traveling from Europe and fifteen of the 153 attendees from Europe or Asia. The meeting drew domestic participants from colleges and universities throughout the Northeast, including Worcester Polytechnic, University of Vermont, Penn State, Dartmouth, and Harvard. Participants presented more than 50 posters. Attendees included many students, both graduate and undergraduate. The talks and posters were excellent, and discussions were long-lived and enthusiastic.