Agenda for MSM 2008 Consortium Meeting

Tuesday August 5, 2008, 5:30-7pm, Montreal, Canada

Argenteuil Room

1. Recognizing 24 MSM projects, signing of special poster

2. Plans for 2009 meeting - joint US-EU meeting, July 2009(?)

• Comments on the Current Meeting:
  • Members commented that this was a good meeting. Topics have been brought up that don’t get brought up by other meetings. SIAM a good forum (small). This is an improved meeting due to IMAG participation.
  • Recommend doing this in conjunction with SIAM in the future
  • Hard to budget for an international meeting at the end of the grant period
  • SMB might be another option
  • Maybe shouldn’t do it every year at another meeting
  • Having meeting in Bethesda made other PO's available from NIH that don’t participate in IMAG
  • Suggestion to alternate between meetings in DC and in conjunction of another scientific meeaning.
  • Really like that people are going in depth scientifically – might not do that if the meeting was held in Bethesda for the funding agencies.
  • Could 4-day meetings be held in Bethesda? Is it cost-prohibitive?

• Joint US-EU Meeting
  • Concerns raised regarding funds
  • Idea would be to promote collaborations among members in EU and EU
  • Must be a focused topic - may have too many people involved

• What do people look for in a grantee meeting?
  • This topic is not necessarily covered in other grantees meetings
  • Getting into hard science top priority
  • Want to form new scientific collaborations
  • Want a chance to talk with other people

• How to improve international collaborations
  • Should there be a mechanism specifically for international collaborations?
  • Review culture hostile to international collaborations

3. MSM Mission and Charter, IMAG ONLY: MSM Mission and Charter

4. Updates from Working Groups 1-10

• Working Group 1:
  • Too large to get anything useful out of it in its current form
  • Working group 1 should be disbanded and should work with each other informally (?)

• Working Group 2: Media:WG2_-_2008.ppt
  • Being public made it possible to reach out to new collaborators and have new collaborators reach out to them.
  • Suggests having money available for collaborative projects.
  • Because of the focus on collaborations, would like to remain a working group but meet less frequently (3-4 times per year)
  • Marco to remain as lead

• Working Group 3: media:WG3.ppt
  • WG3 combined with WG7
  • Experience of having 2 leads was positive. Helps to tag-team in terms of motivation as well as due to time constraints of each individual

• Working Group 4:
  • Workshop in '07 was the highlight of the working group
  • Workshops/face-to-face settings are most useful, but time is a major hurdle
  • Change name to multi-cell modeling?
  • Suggest new ontology software on the wiki? (as a resource)
  • Would like to continue the working group

• Working Group 5:
  • WG was cancelled in '07, now combined with WG 8
  • Merge theoretical and computational issues into one group.

• Working Group 6: media:Siam_08_Tiss_Mech_WG.ppt‎
  • Would like to keep the group
  • Works if working towards a concrete objective (last year working on IEEE article)

• Working Group 7: See WG3 updates

• Working Group 8:

• Working Group 9: Media:WG9_SIAM2008.ppt‎

• Working Group 10:media:WG10_Share_Standardize.ppt
  • Most active WG at this moment.
  • Isn't productive for new science but hopes to be a vehicle for new science
  • Existence raises awareness of the need for standards
  • Would like to keep the group

5. Evaluation, addition and removal of Working Groups

6. Working Group Schedule for next year

• September 2008 - WG1,

• October 2008 WG5/WG8/WG9 (move to 11/10/08)

• November 2008 - WG4

• December 2008 - WG2,

• January 2009 - WG1, WG10

• February 2009 - WG3/WG7,WG6/OpenSIM

• March 2009 WG6 WG5/WG8/WG9

• April 2009 - WG3/WG7, WG4

• May 2009 - WG2,WG10

• June 2009

7. Future directions of the MSM

• Has the Wiki enhanced the working group's function
  • No: it is hard to find time to read and contribute to.
  • May be a generation issue between young/experienced investigators due to availability of contacts and excitement over this type of technology.
  • Could have pages per investigator to describe their work and what they look for in an investigator
  • Perhaps organize IMAG around topics instead of the working groups
  • Would an MSM "My-space" be abetter format?
  • Wiki tends to be an archival format versus a dynamic page
  • Log-in inhibits wiki use?
  • Email as a stimulus to using the web?

• International Collaborations
  • Karin Johansson: European Union looking to support investigators outside of the EU in the near future. Encourage MSM members to pursue EU funding.
  • Contact EU representatives to find out about new opportunities for collaborations.

• Population Modeling

• Other opportunities and challenges

Back to Overall SIAM Schedule