NEAR VENICE IN 2004?

At the conclusion of the Physarum Workshop in Freiburg, we voted to hold the next meeting in 2004 on one of the small islands close to Venice, Italy. We also decided to more agressively advertise this meeting by contacting "newcomers", whom we hope to identify from the current scientific literature or elsewhere and to include in the meeting program. We organized a committee that will screen the literature and other scientific events for anyone working with Physarum or other myxomycetes. The members of the committee and their fields for "screening" are as follows -

Marianne Benard: Molecular Genetics
Mark Adelman: Biophysics, Systematics
Wolfgang Marwan: Photobiology
Gabriele Werner-Felmayer: Development
Satoshi Ogihara: Cell Biology and Biophysics
Shigeyuki Kawano: Phylogenetics
Eggehard Holler: Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Eggehard Holler agreed to chair the committee unless/until someone else expresses a burning desire to take over this duty. We all agreed that the committee must begin its work early so that a tentaive list of participants and topics will have been identified no later than 9 to 6 months before the meeting (tentatively to be held in the first week of July 2004). Each member may contact prospective speakers on behalf of the group, expressing the interest of the Physarum Group in the scientific work of the prospective speaker(s) and inviting them to participate in the meeting. The names of the speakers (and their topics and affiliations) showing interest will be forwarded to the chair. An official invitation will follow separately, sent by the organizer (presumably Eggehard Holler, with the assistance of Wolfgang Marwan). Each member of the Physarum Community is also urged to propose a renowned scientist for a general lecture that is in some way related to the research activities of our Group. Thus the program of this meeting will depend on the registration of ourselves and of as many newcomers as we can identify and attract. We expect that the program will take shape approximately 3-4 months ahead of the meeting, i.e. in early 2004.