CONFERENCE OVERVIEW AND AIMS

Goals: The goal of our small annual tutorial workshop (now in second year) is to bring together researchers and trainees from a broad range of disciplines and scientific backgrounds, all of whom are working—from different perspectives and approaches— to understand healthy aging and the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. We seek to (1) pull attendees out of their academic and scientific silos, helping them understand relevant methods and findings from related fields, (2) seed the potential for future cross-disciplinary collaborations, (3) facilitate the transition from basic research to clinical interventions that promote healthy aging, and (4) for student and postdoctoral trainees: promote, early in their career, a broader interdisciplinary vision of future progress in aging, brain health, and Alzheimer’s prevention.

For Whom: This will be a small intimate meeting strictly limited by the size of the room to 50 people. We expect a very diverse range of attendees from dozens of different fields, all interested in cross-disciplinary communication, understanding, and collaboration within aging, brain health, and Alzheimer’s disease research (we hope each year to “seed” some new cross-disciplinary collaborations through this meeting). We are raising money now for student travel fellowships; these students will give three minute “elevator pitch” summaries of their research (no slides, no notes). In addition, about 20% of the audience is expected to be members of the general public, mainly locals from Aspen or those who vacation in Aspen, all interested in the latest updates aging and brain health (some of whom we hope will also become donors to support student travel fellowships).

The Format: We have talks all three days from 4-7pm for a total of 19 different 15-minute TED-talk-like broadly-accessible tutorials: no jargon, no acronyms, no presumption of audience having any expertise in the speaker’s field. There will be two dinners included, an informal pizza party the first night (January 7th) and a more elaborate final banquet the last night (January 9th). We will be back at the Stonebridge Inn, located ski-in/ski-out at the base of Snowmass mountain (https://www.stonebridgeinn.com/). Breakfast will be included in the room rate so we expect most people will have breakfast together for even more unstructured time together. For the non-skiers, we will organize some group social activities on the 8th and 9th.