Director's Report - 2009
Looking back at the decade just ended, there were 212 meetings at Banbury, with 6277 participants, an average of 31 participants per meeting. (These participants represent 4839 individuals as many came more than once in the period.) Seventy-seven percent of participants came from the USA, and the percentage of female participants was 26%. The number of meetings each year ranged from a low of 17 in 2006 to a high of 26 in 2001.
A full list of Banbury Center meetings held in 2009 will be found here.
To return to 2009, the year was characterized by a larger-than-usual number of meetings dealing with policy or the planning of research or promotion of a research area. Perhaps the most notable of these meetings was one held in December, on Promoting Research on Severe Mental Illness. The themes of the meeting were that finding the genes involved in severe mental disease is the most promising line of research, and that the new generation of tools for large-scale genomics provides new opportunities for research on mental illness; Led by Jim Watson, Ed Scolnick and Herb Pardes, participants reviewed the current state of genetic and genomics research, and discussed how to advance this research. Participants undertook to draw up a white paper that would be published in a leading science journal. Fittingly, support for the meeting was provided by foundations who are at the forefront of research on mental illnesses, including NARSAD-The Brain & Behavior Research Fund, World Heritage Foundation - Prechter Family Fund, and the Simons Foundation.
The meeting Aquatic Plants: Environment, Energy and Evolution was another example of a meeting combining research and policy. Duckweeds are familiar to us as the green "scum" floating on the surface of still bodies of water, such as ponds. They are tiny plants, without leaves or stems, and may or may not have rootlets. Duckweeds reproduce vegetatively as well as sexually, and have the fastest known doubling time of flowering plants. Their advantages as experimental organisms are that they are easy to culture, have relatively small genomes, and can be transformed. Duckweeds are already used as food and in bioremediation, but participants in this meeting believe that the potential of duckweed has yet to be fully realized. As a consequence, participants critically reviewed the biological and genetic properties of duckweed, and examined the ways in which these properties could be exploited, and duckweed promoted, for biomass, biofuels, metabolic engineering and bioremediation. 
Continuing with this theme, Banbury Center hosted a meeting of the International Steering Committee for Plant Genomics, an informal group made up of funding organizations with a special interest in promoting genomic techniques for improving crops. The Committee, which includes scientists from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom, and United States, came to Banbury to develop a first draft of "a vision paper for the future of plant biology." Michael Gale, from the John Innes Institute in Norwich, England was one of the participants and we were saddened to learn of his death in July, 2009. Mike was one of the world's leading authorities on cereal genetics and his research career was devoted to relieving world hunger through the improvement of cereal crops. 
A notable scientific meeting was Structural Variation in the Human Genome. Structural changes in genomes have been known for many years. Studies of chromosomes revealed major rearrangements such as translocations, inversions, insertions and so on. The introduction of chromosome banding stains in the 1960s revealed much smaller, intrachromosomal insertions and deletions. There was a further increase in resolution with the use of DNA probes and microarray techniques, and it became clear changes could be as small as a few kilobases and were far more common in the human genome than had been expected. Indeed, copy number variants (CNVs) are now recognized as one of the most common forms of genetic variation in human beings. CNVs have been associated with a range of human developmental disorders, including psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Participants in this meeting discussed the mechanisms by which CNVs arise, their clinical consequences, and the development of diagnostics tests.
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was one of the great scientific enterprises of the 20th century, ranking with the Manhattan and Apollo Projects. The latter have been exhaustively documented, by the Department of Energy and by NASA, and we believe that the HGP justifies the same historical attention. We have initiated a program to document the history of the HGP and related sequencing projects. The first goal of this project is to create a comprehensive database of the locations, nature and a description of materials relating to the HGP, whether held by scientists, academic institutions, foundations or government departments. The discussion meeting International Catalog for the History of the Human Genome Project was held to examine how other organizations have assembled such databases; to review the proposed project; and to suggest amendments and modifications in the light of other experience. Participants included key players in the early development of the HGP, historians of science and archivists working on similar projects. The discussions were most helpful for planning the next steps in our project. The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation promotes biomedical research by providing fellowships for graduate students carrying out research for a Ph.D.. Each year, the Foundation holds a meeting in North America for their fellows and 2009 marked the third occasion on which the Foundation has come to Banbury. It is always a pleasure to have scientists-in-training here, especially as the Foundation generously funds a special lecture, open to CSHL scientists. We were delighted to have Beth Shapiro (Pennsylvania State University) as our speaker. Beth had just been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and, having heard her fascinating research, it was clear to see why she had been chosen.
Participants in the meetings and students in the summer courses held in 2009 have enjoyed the fruits of the refurbishment of Robertson House which was carried out during the winter 2008-2009. The Robertson family has continued to help us in preserving Robertson House, and in particular, I would like to thank Victoria Linnartz, the granddaughter of Charles and Marie Robertson, for all her hard work in enhancing the beauty of the house.
When I came to the Banbury Center, Bea Toliver was already here as assistant to the Banbury director and Katya Davey was hostess in Robertson House. It was immediately clear that we needed help and so, early in 1988, Ellie Sidorenko joined us in the Banbury office. Ellie was the first and only change in the Banbury Center staff for over 20 years, and now, in the space of just a few years, Katya, Bea and, in 2009, Ellie retired. Banbury has been very fortunate in recruiting three people who have immediately understood the Banbury style of doing things. Basia Polakowski took on the role of hostess in Robertson House in 2005, and, in 2009, Janice Tozzo become the Banbury Center assistant and was joined by Susanne Igneri.
As always, the operations of the Banbury Center depend on many people. Janice, Susanne and Basia have already earned the thanks of meetings participants; Mike Peluso and the grounds crew continue to keep the Banbury grounds looking beautiful; Johnny Parsons is indispensable in handling our AV needs; Connie Brukin takes interesting and artistic photographs of participants; and the staff of the Laboratory's Food Services and Housekeeping cope admirably with the very full schedule of Banbury meetings.
