Ashley Dunn on CSHL Symposia: Past & Present
  Ashley Dunn     Biography    
Recorded: 15 Jan 2003

I think formality and informality separate them. In the days around the mid 1970s, the symposia were incredibly informal. And I think they were more like discussion groups, very big discussion groups, but there was no hesitancy if someone stood up on the stage at a Cold Spring Harbor Symposium and said something that someone judged to be not quite right. They would get shot down pretty quickly. I think there tends to be a reticence about doing that to quite the same extent nowadays as there was then. So I think the difference is one of formality. It seems a little more formal now. That’s not to say the symposia are the worst for it, but my recollection is that they’ve moved from informality to a little more formal occasions and gatherings.

Ashley Dunn is currently a Senior Consulting Scientist and member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Cryptome Pharmaceuticals Ltd., an Australian biotech company. He also serves on Australia’s Gene Technology Advisory Committee. He is the former Head of Molecular Biology in the Melbourne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.

He came to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1976 to work with Joe Sambrook as a postdoctoral fellow and eventually became a junior faculty member.

His research has been concentrated on mammalian growth factors and the regulators responsible for the production of white blood cells in mice and men. He co-invented a mammalian blood cell regulator (GM-CSF), and his lab was the one of the first to establish gene targeting in the development of human diseases such as cancer.

SCIENTISTS SPEAKING ABOUT SYMPOSIA
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