The 2019 annual ICMRS-ORS Membership Meeting was held in Austin on February 2nd, 2019. We have a total of 90 attendees with guests from NIH and JOR. To enhance the social bonding among our members and to better nurture our young investigators, this meeting continue last year’s format of roundtable discussions, by asking the attendees to choose their interested topic and stay at the corresponded table during the entire meeting.
The meeting started with a President’s Report presented by Dr. Ling Qin, President-elect and Chair of Program Committee, on behalf of current President Dr. Tingting Tang. This report summarizes the progress of our society during Dr. Tang’s presidency in the past one and half years, focusing on committees, membership, communication, education, development in China, and sponsored meetings. New committees have been established to increase the regional diversity of our society and enhance the scientific exchange among our members. They include Australia and Asean Development Committee, Europe Develop Committee, and Scientific Committees, which are subdivided into Bone and Joint Biology, Stem Cells and Regeneration, Biomechanical and Biomedical Engineering, Biomaterial and Translational Research. Dr. Qin also announced that our society’s biennial meeting, the 4th International Chinese Musculoskeletal Research Conference will be held in Shenzhen, China, on August 9-12, this year and she encouraged our society members to submit abstracts and attend this meeting.
Following this, Dr. Stuart Goodman from Journal of Orthopaedic Research gave a talk about new developments of JOR and the journal’s outreach to China.
This meeting was then highlighted by the announcement of Webster Jee Young Investigator Awardees by Dr. Chuanju Liu: Jiahui Hang from Brown University, Yulong Wei from the University of Pennsylvania, and Wenguang Liu from Xi’an Jiaotong University. 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 major part of this meeting is a 1-hour panel discussion of Promoting Research Integrity with panelists Drs. Yi-Xian Qin, James Wang, Ed Guo, and Stuart Goodman and Chaired by Dr. Jean Jiang. At the school Dean and department Chair levels, those panelists provided their perception and interpretation about research integrity, ethics, intellectual property, and conflicts of interest/disclosure. Questions from audience regarding specific cases further enhanced this discussion.
At the end, special thanks go to volunteers from our society who helped to organize this membership meeting: Dr. Wei Yao from UC Davis, Dr. Neil Dong from University of Texas, Dr. Sherry Liu from University of Pennsylvania, and abstract reviewers for Webster Jee Young Investigator Award.
