Date: July 10, 2021

Time: 11:00-18:00 EST

Location: Virtual meeting via Zoom

Participants: Members, speakers, sponsors, and trainees (over 150 people)

            Event summary:

            Before the formal start of the Annual Meeting, members who joined early to the Zoom meeting started to chat casually. In addition to CADA members, a longtime friend and mentor of a number of CADA members, Dr. Philipp Scherer from UT Southwestern Medical Center also joined the chat. He has graciously accepted the CADA invitation as a Keynote speaker.

            Welcome Remarks

            At 11:00am EST, the meeting moderator, Dr. Qingchun Tong announced the kickoff of 2021 CADA Annual Meeting. Dr. Meilian Liu, the current CADA President, gave a speech introducing the brief history and the mission of CADA, thanking all the members, and also summarizing CADA’s activities in the past year. Then Meilian introduced the incoming CADA President, Dr. Xiaoyong Yang to deliver a welcome speech. Xiaoyong is expecting a “full house” for this Annual Meeting and for the future CADA meetings.

                Keynote Speech

                Moving forward to one of the most important scientific events of this meeting, Dr. Annabel Wang introduced the Keynote speaker, Dr, Philipp Scherer. Dr Scherer then spent 45 minutes sharing beautiful studies regarding how adipocyte-secreted factors impact other organs and mediate systemic homeostasis. All participants were very much impressed by Dr. Scherer’s talk and many members were engaged in an interactive discussion through Q & A with with Dr. Scherer.

            CADA Sponsor Presentations

            Upon completion of the Keynote Lecture, Dr. Zhuoxian Meng gave the stage to CADA Platinum Sponsors. Gem Pharmatech, Biocytogen, and GenuIN Biotech presented an overview of their companies and respective services related to CADA members’ research. Their presentations covered mouse models, CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and antibody validation, that will benefit CADA members’ future research. Sinocare Inc also provided great support for this meeting. The detailed information about our sponsor’s products and service will be available on the website of CADA: https://www.gocada.org/sponsors/.

            Board Election

           Dr. Jun Liu, then hosted the election of a new CADA board member and the vote for President-elect. Three excellent candidates for board member, all females, presented their visions and prospects for CADA development. Firstly, Dr. Shuibing Chen described her plan in increasing global impact of CADA, facilitating technology commercialization by CADA members, and enhancing member service. Secondly, Dr. Linglin Xie introduced herself and proposed that members should receive targeted help from CADA and the WeChat group can be improved with more focused mini-groups. Lastly but not least, Dr. Congcong He made a statement of her plan in increasing assistance for mid-career researchers and the launch of inviting journal editors to future CADA annual meetings. After each candidate’s speech, CADA members further interacted with the candidates through a Q&A.

          In addition to the board member election, the other key task for this event is to introduce CADA’ next president candidate and to request members’ votes and support. Dr. Jun Liu invited the President-elect candidate, Dr. Qingchun Tong to address to all participants at the meeting. Dr. Tong has been serving as a treasurer of CADA, and exhibited a service spirit and a leadership ability, therefore, he was unanimously nominated by the board as the President-elect candidate. After all the speeches, election and vote were held virtually through an online survey. The final results were announced on July 12, 2021 by CADA President, Dr. Xiaoyong Yang: Dr. Shuibing Chen has been successfully elected into the CADA board and Dr. Qingchun Tong has been approved by CADA members to start his tenure as President-elect.

            CADA Annual Reports

            After the election, six board or committee members presented CADA Annual Reports. Dr. Qingchun Tong started with a detailed financial report, followed by Dr. Jun Liu’s report on membership development, and then on behalf of CADA Program Committee and Happy Hour Committee, Drs. Zhuoxian Meng and Haibin Ruan summarized their activities and outlined the future plans, respectively. Then Dr. Qiong (Annabel) Wang introduced the Communication Committee’s efforts in developing CADA twitter and website. Last but not least, Dr. Wendong Huang, on behalf of Professional Development Committee, shared their assistance in members’ job hunting and exciting new position news for several CADA members.

            Award Announcement & Speech

            The next activity was the celebration of members’ achievements by presenting CADA awards, which was expected to bring more joyfulness to all CADA members. It indeed brought a wave of claps, laughs and cheers. Hosted by Dr. Li Qiang, three CADA awards, including Achievement Award, Young Investigator Award, and Service Award, as well as this year’s awardees were introduced to all meeting participants. Dr. Lu Cai gave a wonderful introduction for this year’s awardee, Dr. Ling Qi, followed by many other members’ appraisal in Dr. Qi’s scientific achievements, warmhearted personality, superb leadership, and energetic activities when serving to the CADA. Moving on to the Young Investigator Award, it was delightful that two young talented researchers from mainland China, Dr. Changtao Jiang and Dr. Xiaowei Chen, shared this year’s Young Investigator Award. Dr. Wendong Huang introduced Dr. Jiang and highlighted his past research achievement. Dr. Jun Liu briefly told us how he interacted with Dr. Chen, and Dr. Chen is well-deserved for this award as he is thinking critically, self-driven, and always persistent. Drs. Jiang and Chen both felt thrilled and expressed their gratitude. In recognition of exemplary service by active CADA members, the CADA Board for the first time has established a Service Award. Dr. Haibin Ruan received the inaugural Service Award for his significant contributions to the Happy Hour talks starting from the pandemic time, which has truly become a very beneficial platform for CADA members to exchange ideas.

             It was important for every member to express thanks to previous board members and celebrate the recent retirement of two current board members, President Meilian Liu and Membership Director Jun Liu. They have served CADA for years and became visionary leaders in the CADA Board. Dr. Xiaoyong Yang hosted this session and expressed sincere gratitude to both previous colleagues, and sent the warmest and the best wishes for their retirement from the CADA Board.

            Grant Application Panel

            To benefit members from learning from other senior and experienced members, the meeting moved onto the last important event, Grant Application Panel. Five excellent panelists, including Drs. Lily Dong, Liqing Yu, Liangyou Rui, Yong Xu, and Shuibing Chen, and the moderator, Dr. Haibin Ruan, conducted a very thorough discussion on the practice of grant application. Many topics were covered, such as personal successful tips from each panelist, how to choose and change study sections, how to change new directions at the mid-career stage, how to separate from postdoc mentors as new faculty members, how to deal with already completed experiments in the grant application, and how to avoid being offensive during study section discussion, etc. Due to time limits, this panel discussion had to be concluded despite of unstoppable enthusiasm from all participants. Many members were expecting a similar event to be held soon.

            Social Time and Concluding Remarks

            Lasting for six hours, main events for the 2021 Annual Meeting came to the end. Although it was late afternoon EST, members remained enthusiastic for the after-event activity, social time chat. Almost 20 members chose to stay and started group chats. The whole meeting was concluded at 6:00pm EST. The members appraised this is “an amazing event organized by CADA”, and appreciated the efforts by CADA board members and committee members. Members are looking forward to future CADA events!

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