Program Book - Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health ...

INTRODUCTION
4
23-26 August 2007,
Budapest, Hungary
Background pattern: decoration of an 1100 year old
Hungarian silver bag-plate found in Bezdéd, Hungary.
Left: schematic drawing of a Hungarian bow from the 9th
century. Right: silhouette of the 60 kDa heat shock protein,
GroEL. CSSi: abbreviation of Cell Stress and Chaperones
International.
We are happy to present you the program book of the 2 nd World Conference of Stress (August 2007,
Budapest, Hungary). This multidisciplinary meeting is a sequel of the highly successful Conference in 1997,
which led to the establishment of Cell Stress Society International. The 2 nd Conference is the 3rd Congress of
this Society. We organized the Conference with the following aims:
• help to strengthen the membership and ties of Cell Stress Society;
• help to establish unusual links between various fields of stress research;
• give special opportunities <strong>for</strong> young and women scientists;
• show that Science is Fun;
• and last but not least: to celebrate the centennial birth anniversary of Hans Selye, the founder of the
stress concept, who was born in Hungary in 1907, and to give a taste from the thousand years old
history of Hungary and Hungarian science.
It was our great pleasure to see the overwhelmingly positive response of the scientific community to this
event. We had more than 400 symposium proposals, over 3,200 pre-registrants and well over a thousand
participants. The congress introduces the stress concept in the original Hans Selye’s sense, and has a core <strong>for</strong>
molecular stress, which is surrounded by a halo of other congress-modules <strong>for</strong> various topics of stress
research. Importantly, the congress shows the necessity and means <strong>for</strong> the system-level understanding of the
individual molecular data. The event gives an exceptional impact <strong>for</strong> the young scientists in this
multidisciplinary field by fostering the expansion of their contacts (e.g. in Pub Tours with the most
prestigious speakers) as well as by allowing more than a hundred students in the age between 16 and 19 to act
as organizers and helpers of the event.
PÉTER CSERMELY AND TAMÁS KORCSMÁROS