Date: Feb 26, 2021
Time: 21:00-00:30 (Feb 27) EST
Location: Virtual meeting via Zoom
Participants: Over 100 CADA members
Event summary:
Before the formal start of this special celebration, members who joined early to the Zoom meeting started to chat casually.
At 21:00 EST, four hosts, Drs. Li Qiang, Qiong Wang, Haibin Ruan, and Bingning Dong announced the start of this special celebration for the New Year and the Lantern Festival by CADA. They started to deliver New Year wishes using dialects from different regions of China (Henan, Jilin, Shanxi, and Jiangsu).
After the happy beginning, CADA President, Dr. Meilian Liu had a speech thanking all the members and summarizing activities in the year of 2020, including communication development such as Twitter, WeChat and CADA website, Happy Hours talks, and successful recruitment of rising star members and the launch of career development committee.
Then Meilian introduced CADA President-elect, Dr. Xiaoyong Yang to deliver a speech on CADA 2021 Prospects. 2021 CADA activities will cover monthly Happy Hour talks inviting outside speakers, establishment of grassroots interest groups, regional in-person meetings, CADA awards (newly presented Service Award), and upcoming elections.
Moving forward, Dr. Tianru Jin presented his beautiful lyric poetry specially written for this celebration event. Members were amazed by Dr. Jin’s great talent and with these poetries, the atmosphere of this event became full of joy and happiness.
The next activity, celebration of members’ achievements, was expected to bring more joyfulness to all CADA members, and it indeed brought a wave of laughs and wine-toasting. Organized by Drs. Wendong Huang and Zhuoxian Meng, promotions, awards, new positions, and grants from CADA members were announced and celebrated. People were extremely happy to see the achievements from CADA family members. Following the announcements, six representative awardees shared their personal stories: Dr. Shuibing Chen presented a special poetry to express her gratitude and happiness; Dr. Yingqun Huang toasted with her special wine to celebrate her recent promotion to Professor; Dr. Zhen Chen shared her story on obtaining a prestigious award from Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation; Drs. Xiangbo Ruan and Zhuzhen Zhang, two rising star members who recently secured their independent faculty positions, expressed their joy and thanks to CADA; last by not least, Dr. Li Ye who recently was awarded an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award gave people an overview on how he was selected to obtain this prestigious award.
To engage members to learn more about the history and culture of CADA, a Trivia Contest was presented during the celebration. Using an online platform, nearly 70 members participated in this contest to answer 20 questions correctly and timely. This content not only brought 6 prizes for winners, but also greatly increased members’ knowledge of CADA’s past.
A vibe of enthusiasm during the whole event was maintained and promoted through three rounds of Lantern Festival riddles and prize draw. Participants were excited to solve the riddles, and were surprised and amazed to be selected by the prize draw. It was noted that the CADA board and committees prepared very special gifts for all prize winners, including customized wine with CADA labels.
Lasting for two hours, main events for this special celebration came to the end. Although it was late night eastern time, members remained enthusiastic for the after-event activity, breakout room chat. Almost 50 members chose to stay and joined their preferred breakout room to start group chats. Here is a brief summary from each thematic breakout room:
Adipose/Pancreas breakout room (by Dr. Yu An): Drs. Li Qiang and Yu An helped to host this breakout room. We had a very friendly and insightful discussion on the topic of weight loss by brown and beiging adipose tissue, the emerging role of obesity in COVID-19, and the application of adipose tissue in cosmetic industry. The most interesting topic was led by Drs. Li Qiang, Alex Ma, and Hongyuan Yang, and how to perform translational research and the connection with industry were extensively discussed.
Liver breakout room (by Dr. Shengyi Sun): We started by chatting about the snow in Texas. Then several members with experience in study sections discussed about the roles and importance of PO and SRO at NIH, as well as skills in submitting grants to different study sections. The rest of the discussion focused on the research and pharmaceutical efforts in fatty liver and NASH.
Immunometabolism breakout room (by Drs. Wenxian Fu and Meilian Liu): We started with a discussion on adipose-resident macrophages, particularly whether increased macrophages are due to the self-proliferation vs recruitment. We also discussed how we can specifically target tissue-resident macrophage as a research strategy as well as a therapeutic approach. The Clec4f promoter has been used for gene manipulation of Kupffer cells in the liver. In addition, we discussed macrophages within pancreatic islets and their key feature. Following that, we chatted about drug discovery, grant application and CADA meeting.
Brain-Gut breakout room (by Dr. Zhiping Pang): We have a number of CADA members who are interested in studying CNS control of energy homeostasis joined the discussion. We discussed about emerging research tools and techniques in the field, as well as grant application. New collaborations potentially will be emerged among CADA members from different sites. Compared to other groups, the number of brain-gut centric CADA members seems to be less and we need to attract more young generation scientists into this exciting field.
Women in Science breakout room (by Dr. Yingfeng Deng): Without a doubt, female scientists face substantial career development challenges regarding the balance of work and family life. We shared our concerns and talked about the potential solutions. Drs. Lily Dong and Linda Cai, two women scientists who have made outstanding achievements in research, led an inspiratory discussion about how women scientists could seek supports at different stages of career development. Thanks to Lily and Linda and many other excellent woman scientists in CADA, the academic journey becomes more exciting rather than daunting for people with both careers and loved ones to care for. Special thanks to Dr. Lin Qi, immediate-past president of CADA, who joined the breakroom as the representative for “Men in Science” and delivered the best wishes and encouragements from the other half of the CADA family.
Cardiovascular system and mitochondria breakout room (by Dr. Liming Pei): Dr. Ling Qi dropped in and we exchanged holiday wishes. No other people came and 10 minutes later we both decided to go out to join other breakout rooms.
The whole celebration event was concluded at 12:30 EST in midnight. Many members appraised this is “an amazing event organized by CADA”, and appreciated the efforts by CADA board members and committee members. Best wishes for each member in the Year of Ox and look forward to future CADA events!