Educational supplement for the 30th Summer Symposium in Molecular Biology

Intellectual Merit

The 30th Penn State Summer Symposium in Molecular Biology will be held June 21-24, 2011 at University Park, PA. The topic of this symposium is 'Chromatin and Epigenetic Regulation of Transcription'. The symposium will cover chromatin organization and the mechanistic basis for genetic and epigenetic regulation of transcription. The session topics are as follows: Genomics, Nuclear Organization, Chromatin Mechanisms, Epigenetics, and Elongation Control. The roster of 22 invited speakers is composed of internationally acclaimed scientists who lead research in the field of chromatin structure and epigenetics. The unique intellectual strength of the Penn State Summer symposium is that it is combines the top scientific level of the meeting with location at a big University campus that makes it readily accessible to a wide body of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students undergoing summer training at the Penn State Hershey and University Park campuses. A group of faculty at Pennsylvania State University have assembled a list of 22 invited speakers with an additional 30 oral presentations selected from submitted abstracts.

Broader Impacts

The summer symposium will provide a vehicle for exchange of information between scientists at Penn State and other institutions. It is financially accessible to undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, who comprise about 75% of attendees. Many of these students are members of underrepresented groups or represent rural areas in central Pennsylvania. The plenary lecture is open to the general public.