Meet the experts sessions at  the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo give attendees a rare opportunity to dialogue with some of the foremost scientists in the country.

Meet the experts events follow each of the five plenary sessions and the special session on the QualComm Tricorder XPRIZE, either immediately, or the following day. With a maximum of just 75 attendees, the sessions give attendees an opportunity to interact with high profile experts in an intimate setting, according to Ann Gronowski, PhD, DABCC, FACB, the Annual Meeting Organizing Committee member who coordinated these sessions.

Attendees will be able to ask questions “and delve into a topic much deeper than possible in a large lecture hall,” said Gronowski, a professor of pathology and immunology and obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine, Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine, St. Louis.

In her own experience attending meet the experts sessions, Gronowski said she’s gotten to know speakers on a more personal level. “I also feel that because it is a smaller setting, attendees are more comfortable asking questions,” she said.

Sessions will take place on the following days:

July 31

CRISPR Biology, Technology & Ethics: The Future of Genome Engineering (62101)

Jennifer Doudna, PhD, University of California Berkeley

Co-inventor of the gene editing tool, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), Doudna is this year’s Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship awardee. “CRISPR has been in the scientific and popular press a lot lately because of its amazing capacity as an accurate gene editing tool, because of a high-profile patent dispute, and because of the ethics questions raised by the prospects of using this tool on human genes,” according to Gronowski.

Oncofertility: From Bench to Bedside to Babies (62102)

Teresa Woodruff, PhD, Northwestern University

Named as one of Time magazine’s Most Influential People in 2013, Woodruff is pioneering ways to preserve female fertility after cancer chemotherapy treatment. She has coined the term “oncofertility” and her lab has bioengineered methods to develop human follicles in vitro, Gronowski said.

Aug. 1

Beyond Sequencing: New Frontiers in Genomics (63101)

Jay Shendure, MD, PhD, University of Washington

A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Shendure has  pioneered exome sequencing and its application to Mendelian disorders, a strategy that has been applied to identify hundreds of disease-causing genes. His lab continues to exploit new DNA sequencing methods for clinical use and discovery in genetics, genomics, and molecular biology.

A Q&A with Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Finalists (63102)

Eugene Chan, PhD, DNA Medicine Institute

Chung-Kang Peng, PhD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Phil Charron, Basil Leaf Technologies

Jessica Ching, XPRIZE

The highly publicized Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE challenged competitors to develop a noninvasive health diagnostics system that weighed no more than 5 pounds and was able to diagnose more than a dozen medical conditions. “The opportunity to meet and hear from the winner and several finalists of this competition is very exciting,” Gronowski said.

Aug. 2

Antibiotic Resistance: A Public Health Crisis (64101)

Victoria J. Fraser, MD, Washington University School of Medicine

Aug. 3

Modern, Effective Care for Substance Use Disorders: Findings from the 2016 Surgeon General’s Facing Addiction Report (65101)

A. Thomas McLellan, BA, MS, PhD, Treatment Research Institute

All of the meet the experts sessions occur from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and are worth 1 CE hour. Don’t miss out on a chance to mingle with industry experts at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, July 30–Aug. 3 in San Diego.