President Fred Freidburg:
"An interesting and diverse multidisciplinary program is nearing completion for our 11th biennial international research and clinical conference to be held in San Francisco, March 20-23, 2014.
The conference is co-supported by Stanford University and will be held at the Parc 55 Wyndham Hotel, conveniently located in the Downtown area.
The special discounted room rate is $199/night.
Our call for late breaking poster abstracts is now underway (
www.iacfsme.org). And early bird registration for the conference is now open (
www.iacfsme.org).
We have very exciting news!
Dr. Ian Lipkin, called the "master virus hunter" by The New York Times will be our special guest speaker on March 20, 2014, the opening talk of the four day meeting. Dr. Lipkin is a professor of epidemiology and neurology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University.
He and his team have discovered or characterized more than 500 infectious agents including Borna disease virus and West Nile virus. He also led the definitive scientific study that found no link between CFS/ME and the XMRV retrovirus.
Dr. Lipkin was the first to use purely molecular methods to identify infectious agents, assisted the WHO and the Peoples' Republic of China during the 2003 SARS outbreak, and pioneered the use of high throughput sequencing in pathogen discovery.
And we have more pre-eminent speakers on our agenda!
Our keynote is physician-author
Abraham Verghese, Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School. Few people combine a career as physician, professor and author as well as Abraham Verghese, who has been on
The New York Times bestseller list with all three of his books, including his most recent work, Cutting for Stone. In 2011, he was elected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Today, in his writing and his work, he continues to emphasize the importance of bedside medicine and physical examination in a time when advanced technology frequently results in the patient having less attention than the patient data in the computer.
Our plenary speaker will be
Noel R. Rose, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Autoimmune Disease Research and a Professor in the Department of Pathology (with joint appointment in the Department of Medicine) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
He is also a Professor in the W. Henry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public health. Dr. Rose's pioneering studies on autoimmune thyroiditis and myocarditis helped to initiate the modern era of research on autoimmune disease. He will address the issue of fatigue and autoimmune disease.
Attend a Unique International Conference:The First to Focus on Fatigue in Illness and Health
We expect our 2014 research and clinical conference to be unique, innovative and exciting -- given its broadened focus on fatigue in illness and health. I have already learned through publication of our new fatigue journal how the challenges of studying CFS/ME can be informed and advanced by important research in related fields that we may be less familiar with."
