Bringing together scientists, clinician-scientists, and research trainees to exchange the latest advancements and breakthroughs in understanding and treating retinal degenerative diseases.
The mission of RD Meeting Inc is to organize scientific conferences focused on retinal degeneration. The goal is to bring together the leading researchers, clinician-scientists, and trainees from around the world to discuss their research in a relaxed and collegial atmosphere. It also aims to give young investigators an opportunity to meet and interact with these outstanding scientists. The goal is to hold a scientific conference that will lead to new collaborations, build the scientific careers of young scientists, and advance our understanding of retinal degenerative disease. The goal is to impact the development of new therapies to reduce blindness from retinal degeneration.
A major activity of RD Meeting Inc. is to provided travel fellowships for early career scientists to attend the bi-annual conference. We Are Excited To Announce The creation of the Alan Laties RD Memorial Fund. The fund was created to support the Alan Laties Endowed Lectureship and travel fellowships for young investigators to attend the international symposium on retinal degeneration.
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The 2025 International Symposium on Retinal Degeneration, known as RD2025 will be held in Prague, Czech Republic from September 15-19, 2025.
what we do
The main activites of RD Meeting Inc. is to organize bi-annual RD meetings and raise funding to support travel awards for 50 to 60 early career scientists to attend the Meeting. The meeings are focus on retinal degeneration research and are organized to attract both basic and clinician scientists committed to this area of investigation.
The oranizers reasoned that with the new breakthroughs in molecular biology and the molecular diagnosis of a variety of retinal degenerations, the time was ripe to bring a small number of these different “camps” together in a pleasant and somewhat isolated environment where there was sufficient time to interact in the meeting hall as well as during meal and social times. An excursion day included as part of the program at each meeting proved to be especially beneficial for the young investigators, where they found ample time to interact with leaders in the field. The interactions between the basic and clinician scientists were remarkably successful and many fruitful collaborations resulted from casual conversations outside of the meeting hall.
Early on we recognized the need to bring new investigators into this exciting area of research and are grateful for the support of NIH/NEI and philanthropic organizations and other donors in this effort. Since RD2000, 381 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty have received full funding to attend these meetings. For many of these travel awardees, attending the RD meeting helped solidify their commitment to focus their research careers on retinal degeneration.
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In 2018, the RD meeting convened in Killarney, Ireland on September 3-8, 2018. Participants included 295 retinal degeneration investigators from around the globe. With support from the National Eye Institute, Foundation Fighting Blindness, BrightFocus Foundation, Fritz Tobler Foundation, Science Foundation Ireland, Pro-Retina Germany, Bayer Switzerland, and Bioscience Ireland, 67 young investigators were able to attend this meeting with travel awards. Four keynote speakers presented outstanding state-of-the-art presentations on retinal degeneration research: Professor Rando Allikmets, PhD (Columbia), Professor Jacque L. Duncan, MD (UCSF), Professor James T. Handa, MD (Johns Hopkins), and Professor Peter Humphries, PhD (Trinity College Dublin). This was the last RD meeting for Dr. Matthew LaVail, one of the original organizers, who retired earlier from the University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Eric Pierce (Harvard Medical School) was invited to join the RD Organizing Committee.
RD20/20 2020 began with the emergence of a new highly infectious coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV2, which spread rapidly and led to a worldwide pandemic declaration. Out of necessity, the organizers canceled the RD20/20 meeting. With the development of multiple highly effective vaccines, the organizers could reschedule the XIXth International Symposium on Retinal degeneration for September of 2021.
RD2021 The XIX International Symposium on Retinal Degeneration was held from September 26 to October 2, 2021. From the beginning, we planned the meeting as an in-person meeting with the capability of switching to a hybrid or fully online meeting depending on the state of the pandemic, and we moved the in-person meeting to the US to reduce travel complications for most attendees. As the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant began to surge in the weeks leading up to September, we had to activate the hybrid meeting. The meeting platform we established allowed both in-person and virtual platform talks as well as both in-person and virtual attendance. The platform was organized so that all presentations were live and all participants were able to ask questions.
RD2023 to be continued! We hope you can join us at the RD2023 meeting to help write the next chapter.
Impact of the RD Meetings on the Field The overall plan for these RD meetings was to develop a format with a focus on retinal degeneration research that would attract both basic and clinician scientists committed to this area of investigation. We reasoned that with the new breakthroughs in molecular biology and the molecular diagnosis of a variety of retinal degenerations, the time was ripe to bring a small number of these different “camps” together in a pleasant and somewhat isolated environment where there was sufficient time to interact in the meeting hall as well as during meal and social times. An excursion day included as part of the program at each meeting proved to be especially beneficial for the young investigators, where they found ample time to interact with leaders in the field. The interactions between the basic and clinician scientists were remarkably successful and many fruitful collaborations resulted from casual conversations outside of the meeting hall. Early on we recognized the need to bring new investigators into this exciting area of research and are grateful for the support of NIH/NEI and philanthropic organizations in this effort. Since RD2000, 381 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young faculty have received full funding to attend these meetings. For many of these travel awardees, attending the RD meeting helped solidify their commitment to focus their research careers on retinal degeneration.
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