The 2018 annual ICMRS-ORS Membership Meeting was held in New Orleans on March 10, 2018. We have a total of 110 attendees with some eminent guests. To enhance the social bonding among our members and to better nurture our young investigators, this meeting adopted a new format, roundtable discussions, by asking the attendees to choose their interested topic during online registration and stay at the corresponded table during the entire meeting. Each table was led by 2-4 discussion leaders volunteered by the lifetime members of our society and NIH officials.

The meeting started with a Welcome Message from Dr. Ling Qin, President-elect and Chair of Program Committee, by acknowledging those ICMRS members who help to organize this meeting and introducing the new meeting format. Following that, Dr. Tingting Tang gave a Presidential Speech summarizing the progress of our society since his inauguration last year and his future plan in the next year, focusing on leadership and committees, membership recruitment, communications, regional development, journals, and fundraising. Our society has steadily grown in the past several years, now reaching more than 500 members and a total of 29 collaborating centers in China. In the past several months, we have established several regional development committees. We aim to form the scientific committee in the near future. Anyone who is interested in contributing to this committee and others, please contact our society directly (www.icmrs.net).

This meeting was then highlighted by the announcement of Webster Jee Young Investigator Awardees: Mengxi Lv from the University of Delaware, Luqiang Wang from the University of Pennsylvania, and Aubryanna Hettinghouse from New York University Medical Center. Each awardee gave a brief introduction about their outstanding research. They were presented with an award plaque and a cash prize of $500 each.

 

The following roundtable discussions were set in 10 tables, each with a distinct topic ranging from career development, publication, grant application, to musculoskeletal biology and engineering. With 24 experts from their respective areas and 4 NIH officials (Program Director and Scientific Review Officials), these discussions were actively carried out for an hour with some tables that lasted beyond the meeting closing time.

 

At the end, a surprise guest, Dr. Savio Woo, a member of both the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, gave a closing remark by urging young investigators to pursue the best science in their career.