After careful thought, we decided to postpone our 2020 symposium to a later time, as an in-person meeting is not appropriate due to the quickly-changing global and local situations, public safety concerns, and preventive actions relevant to the pandemic. We were unable to plan even a virtual event, as each of our labs have experienced unpredictable circumstances for the past year, and are still facing significant pandemic-related hurdles to our productivity.

Instead, we arranged a closed meeting for the P01 team on December 14, 2020, which was attended by project leaders, senior researchers, and the NIH Program Officers (Drs. Adriana Costero-Saint Denis and Maliha Ilias). Project updates were shared via Zoom, followed by a detailed discussion about our future plans, especially how to mitigate the delays and constraints imposed on each of our laboratories. Highlights were then shared with the Scientific Advisory Board for their feedback and suggestions. In the end, we were glad for the opportunity to meet in any capacity, albeit on a much smaller scale than we hoped, because it gave us the ability to share our experiences and brainstorm plans to make up for the lost time.