Conference: 2026 Thiol-Based Redox Regulation and Signaling GRC/GRS

This award will support the 2026 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and Seminar (GRS) on “Thiol-Based Redox Regulation and Signaling,” to be held July 11-17, 2026 at the Rey Don Jaime Grand Hotel in Castelldefels, Spain. This meeting will be attended by graduate students, postdocs, and junior and senior faculty researchers from broad-ranging disciplines to discuss and advance our understanding of all aspects of charged oxygen and nitrogen molecules. These compounds were long considered toxic, but more recently have been found to have additional significant roles important for growth and function of a all organisms. The interactions of physiologists, biochemists, and cell biologists will increase our understanding of how these signals in healthy cells and organisms from bacteria through humans maintain normal function. Knowledge of these processes will advance the bioeconomy through greater understanding of the role of oxidation in healthy living creatures critical to agriculture, as well as in animal health, including people. A central and unique aspect of this conference is that senior scientists will productively engage with and train junior scientists in this exciting and multidisciplinary field. This engagement is a priority of the GRC, with a career mentoring workshop/panel discussion part of the formal program, and in particular, the GRS, where all oral presentations are given by graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. The GRS features three faculty mentors that provide important support and feedback in a professional and welcoming “low-stress” environment. Virtually all GRS attendees participate in the GRC that immediately follows, with sixteen short talks selected from submitted abstracts with early career scientists given priority for these slots. These “career-forward” features of this GRC/GRS designed to target early career scientists are important steps toward training and development of the bio-workforce that is poised to address pressing societal challenges as populations age, antimicrobial drug resistance rises and climate change increasingly affects food security. This meeting will be attended by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and emerging and senior researchers to discuss our understanding of all aspects of the metabolism, signaling, and cellular and organismal function of reactive oxygen species, reactive nitrogen species and newly emerging reactive sulfur species (ROS/RNS/RSS). Sessions will focus on recent advances in such topics as “Bringing Balance to Redox Forces”, “Tools and Technologies for Redox Biology”, “Ferroptosis and lipid-based redox signaling,” and “Environmental toxins, Redox metabolism and chromatin.” It is these emerging areas that will be highlighted, to include our field’s development and continued refinement of powerful chemical and genetic tools which allow for targeted induction and quantification of intracellular oxidants and redox outcomes “in space and time.” In addition to formal talks, engagement will be facilitated by daily poster “flash-talk” previews and daily intensive poster sessions that serve to catalyze interactions and exchange between researchers. NSF support will be used to defray travel costs and registration costs of U.S.-based graduate students and postdoctoral fellows training in the U.S. This award is funded by the Cells, Development, and Physiology Section in the Directorate for Biological Sciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2613999 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: David Giedroc | Institution: Gordon Research Conferences, EAST GREENWICH, RI | Award Amount: $15,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2613999 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2613999.html