Travel: 2026 APS Intersociety Meeting: Go Wild for Comparative Physiology

This travel award, administered through the University of Nevada Las Vegas, supports the 2026 American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting: "Go Wild for Comparative Physiology," October 17–20, 2026, in Orlando, Florida. This quadrennial conference is the premier gathering of comparative physiologists in the United States, convening leading researchers, early career scientists, and industry partners to share discoveries and forge collaborations that will shape the discipline for the next four years. Comparative physiology is the study of how diverse organisms function in their natural environments, and it is a discipline with broad relevance to human health, agriculture, conservation, and biotechnology. By examining how animals survive extreme conditions, ranging from deep oceans to desert heat to winter hibernation, comparative physiologists uncover fundamental biological principles that cannot be discovered by investigating a single species alone, with multiple applications to human physiology and biomedicine. The primary goal of this award is to broaden participation in the meeting by funding competitive travel awards for undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career investigators from US institutions. By investing in the next generation of scientists, this award advances the development of a globally competitive STEM workforce and strengthens the pipeline of researchers equipped to address pressing questions at the intersection of biology, ecology, medicine, and environmental change. Up to 17 competitive travel grants are being provided to US-based trainees and early-career investigators who attend the 2026 APS Comparative Physiology Intersociety Meeting, selected on the basis of submitted abstracts, and to fund travel for a leader of the workshop on Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) in Comparative Physiology. The scientific program of the meeting spans nine invited symposia, three featured topic sessions, fifteen abstract-driven sessions, and dedicated poster sessions including the prestigious Scholander Award competition for graduate students and recent doctoral graduates. Symposia topics include genomic and functional approaches to extreme physiological phenotypes, cellular stress physiology in non-model organisms, metabolic challenges to the brain, advances in mitochondrial physiology, and biomedical applications of mammalian hibernation. The meeting directly advances two current NSF priority areas. In biotechnology, symposia will address the use of primary cell culture systems, -omics approaches, and genomic resources to investigate stress tolerance, longevity, and resistance to senescence across taxa. In AI/ML, the conference features a workshop in which trainees will use the NSF-supported National Data Platform to access federated, multi-species heart rate datasets and apply supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods for physiological data segmentation, analysis, and visualization. This training leverages NSF-funded compute infrastructure and emphasizes open data practices. The meeting will also feature a science communication symposium, a mock faculty interview workshop, and industry networking events. With 10 of 30 symposium speakers drawn from international institutions, the conference creates a uniquely integrative environment for driving scientific innovation and international collaboration in comparative and evolutionary physiology. 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: 2625941 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Allyson Hindle | Institution: University of Nevada Las Vegas, LAS VEGAS, NV | Award Amount: $14,464 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2625941 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2625941.html