September 24, 2003

COMB IS A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR AT THE 6th INTERNATIONAL MARINE BIOTECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE (IMBC)

TOKYO, JAPAN— With more than 650 participants from 33 countries, this year's IMBC in Chiba, Japan (September 21-27) is the largest IMBC ever. As always, COMB has brought one of the larger contingents. Six COMB faculty, 2 post-doctoral fellows and 6 graduate students are attending the meeting. All 14 attendees have contributed to the sessions in their respective areas. COMB scientists delivered 3 keynote presentations and a total of 14 presentations in 11 of the 29 IMBC sessions. They had 5 additional posters. The presentations were very diverse and covered a wide range of topics including microbial genomics, bioinformatics, harmful algae, natural products, bioremediation and aquaculture. All of the presentations from COMB were well-organized talks describing cutting-edge research, and each stimulated genuine interest and enthusiastic discussion.

COMB Delegation at the 6th IMBC, September 21-September 27, 2003

COMB's Director Yonathan Zohar and several members of the COMB delegation enjoy some quality time together while participating at the conference.

This is a very important event for COMB, as many of its young scientists and students are exposed to the leading marine biotechnologists and the latest developments in the field. Financial help for most of the COMB participants was available as a result of the efforts of Feng Chen, Russell Hill and Yonathan Zohar, who successfully raised enough extramural funding to support the US participants, especially post-docs and students, traveling to the IMBC. In addition, the chair of the IMBCÕs highly successful program committee was COMB's Russell Hill.

In the two decades since its inception, COMB has clearly established itself at the forefront of marine biotechnology research and can once again feel proud to be able to showcase its accomplishments as a major contributor at the most respected international forum on this topic.