Conference: Annual Conference of the Phytochemical Society of North America: 64th annual meeting on June 24 – 28, 2024 at York University in Toronto, Canada

About This Grant

The Phytochemical Society of North America (PSNA) will hold its 64th annual meeting on June 24 – 28, 2025 at York University in Toronto, Canada. Typically, the conference attracts between 120 and 160 attendees. This grant will support registration, travel, and accommodation costs of U.S.-based scientists to attend the PSNA 2025 conference. Research presented at the PSNA meeting has potential applications for the improvement of human health. These include the development of plant-based foods with enhanced nutritional and health properties, anti-cancer drugs, and other pharmaceuticals. Other benefits to society comprise the sustainable production of biofuels and high value plant-based industrial products. The primary goal of the conference is to bring together scientists from North America and other parts of the world to disseminate unpublished data and share new trends in the field. Historically, this has led to the formation of new collaborative relationships, grant applications, and scientific exchange between participating laboratories. A key feature of this conference is the promotion of trainees by providing students and post-doctoral fellows with opportunities to compete for speaker slots. This meeting will support trainees by providing best presentation and poster awards as judged by a panel of conference attendees. Networking and professional development of junior scientists will be facilitated through panel-guided career workshops for early career scientists. Among PSNA members, there is a long tradition for the study of plant biochemistry, chemistry, and natural products (e.g. food and fiber sources; specialty chemicals, oils, and resins; nutraceuticals; and plant defense chemicals). Symposia planned for the 2025 PSNA conference will include diverse topics such as “Metabolic Engineering and Plant Synthetic Biology”, “Gene Discovery and Functional Plant Genomics”, “Plant Immunity and Microbiome Interactions”, and “Chemical Ecology and Plant-Organismal Interactions”. PSNA 2025 is also planning breakfast events focused on Career Development. A workshop for postdocs will be organized by the PSNA Young Members Committee as facilitated discussion on career development in academia, government, and industry. Based on advice by the PSNA Young Members Committee, the graduate student workshop will focus on how to cope with stress in graduate school and mentor-mentee relationships. A voluntary and fully-anonymous survey will be used to collect information during and after the conference to obtain information on attendee demographics and feedback on what worked or did not work well for them (symposia, poster sessions, workshops) and for suggestions for improvement. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.