Where Science and Community Come Alive

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AACC’s 20 scientific divisions connect laboratorians with similar interests and provide invaluable networking and professional development opportunities. The 71st AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo offers a plethora of activities for attendees to get acquainted with these divisions and make career connections.

For Kerstin Halverson, MS, chair of AACC’s Critical and Point-of-Care Testing Division (CPOCT), division events are an opportunity to meet people from around the world, discuss lab and nonlab topics, and make new friends in the process. “The Annual Scientific Meeting is a think tank week for me. Each year, I come away rejuvenated with lots of ideas and news ways to approach continuing problems seen in labs all across the globe,” Halverson told CLN Stat.

AACC’s Opening Mixer & Division Networking Event on August 4 from 6:45 to 8 p.m. is a great way to meet with division officers informally and find out about division activities. The event will also include games and activities with chances to win special prizes.

The Joint Divisions Luncheon: Implementing Precision Medicine in an Academic Medical Center, a new event sponsored by four AACC divisions, offers another way to access top-notch scientific content while connecting with colleagues who share a professional interest in precision medicine. The Clinical and Diagnostic Immunology, Molecular Pathology, Personalized Medicine, and Tumor Markers and Cancer Diagnostics Divisions will be holding this event on August 6 from noon to 2 p.m. David B. Roth, MD, PhD, director of the Penn Center for Precision Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, will discuss the center’s activities, focusing on precision medicine approaches in routine clinical practice. Registration fee is $15 for AACC members and nonmembers.

Other division events feature invaluable best practices advice and cutting-edge technologies from leading experts. The CPOCT Division “will be advertising a number of events that our division puts on each year with the help of our generous POCT sponsors,” Halverson said. The division, along with Abbott Diagnostics, Instrumentation Laboratory, MediaLab Inc., Nova Biomedical, TELCOR and Whitehat will be hosting the 17th Annual Point-of-Care Coordinators Forum, Point-of-Care Testing: From Research to the Clinical Setting, which will take place August 8 from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. The event will cover the legal and regulatory challenges POC coordinators and staff face when implementing new products and strategies for working with vendor partners. Registration is $20 for all participants.

In addition to this event and the opening mixer, CPOCT will be hosting its member meeting, awards ceremony, and AfterGlow event on August 6 from 6 to 10:30 p.m. and its Division Poster Walk on August 7 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

AACC’s Management Sciences and Patient Safety Division, supported by BD, EKF Diagnostics, and Greiner Bio-One, will host the 24th Annual Management Sciences and Patient Safety Leadership Symposium on August 4 from noon to 1:30 p.m. Paula Santrach, MD, chief quality officer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, will be presenting the talk, “Key Strategies for Real Change: Lessons From the Front Lines.” Registration is $20.

On August 5, the AACC Lipoproteins and Vascular Diseases (LVD) Division’s poster reception, dinner lecture, and awards ceremony, supported by Diazyme, Denka Seiken, and Randox, will take place. The event includes a poster viewing period, a three-course dinner, and a scientific presentation. Registration is $50.

The Mass Spectacular, supported by AACC’s Mass Spectrometry and Separation Sciences Division and Proteomics and Metabolomics divisions, Agilent, MSACL, SCIEX, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Waters Corp., is scheduled for August 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. Participants pay $10 to enjoy a networking reception with MSSS division members and affiliates.

This year’s Nutrition Division Symposium event, Signatures of Steatohepatitis: Potential Biomarkers and Therapeutic Targets, will take place August 6, from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Irina A. Kirpich, PhD, MPH, associate professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, will discuss the discovery of novel biomarkers, molecular targets, and therapeutic strategies for steatohepatitis, a hepatic disorder characterized by hepatocellular injury and inflammation that may further progress to both cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease. Registration is $20.

As a provisional division with limited membership, the Biomarkers of Acute Cardiovascular Diseases Division is taking its own approach to the Annual Scientific Meeting. “It is not so much about networking but more about projects and publications regarding our field,” said division chair Alan Wu, PhD, director of clinical chemistry and toxicology at the University of California at San Francisco. Advancing careers is a key motivator in participating in these activities, he added.

The Biomarkers of Acute Cardiovascular Diseases is one of 12 divisions that will be participating in ePoster and traditional poster walk sessions on August 6 and 7. The schedule for the posters is as follows:

ePosters will replace the oral abstracts sessions and in most cases, traditional division poster walks. Two displays will run simultaneously throughout the day on August 6 and 7. The Annual Meeting Organizing Committee has chosen dedicated time slots for each of the participating divisions, selected student posters, and other selected presenters. Presenters will use interactive screens to display a digital version of posters, allowing them to navigate around a poster and zoom in on figures and data they may want to highlight during their presentations. Division ePoster sessions are scheduled in 45-minute time blocks and will include between 3–5 presenters per session, depending on the division.

Two divisions, Critical and Point-of-Care Testing and Hematology and Coagulation, are offering traditional poster walks:

The cost for division membership ranges from $15 to $25, depending on the division. Learn more about AACC divisions at the 71st AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Anaheim, California.