The UC Discovery Grant program announced it will contribute $15,000 to help fund the scheduled October 14-17, 2003 international conference, “GMOs in 2030: Reaping the Promise While Leaping the Pitfalls?” and will join respective financial donors, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, UCR’s Genonomics Institute, and the UCR Center for Social and Economic Policy. The conference will be sponsored by the Biotechnology Impacts Center at UCR. It will address and examine the social, economic, philosophical, political, ethical, cultural, and environmental impacts of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and biotechnology.

The conference is anticipated to bring public attention to the risks and benefits of genetically modified crops. It will be distinctive from other meetings on the topic in that it will consider potential future impacts, involving a selected group of world-class thinkers and scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Conference sessions will include: What is Our Place in the Biosphere?; Leakage of Transgenes What Does It Really Mean?; GMOs in the Global Economy; Intellectual Property Devices and Their Impact on GMO Adoption; Golden Rice for the Third World; Malaria Resistant Mosquitoes; and Plants as Factories for Industrial Compounds and Pharmaceuticals. The Keynote address will be given by Ex-NPR biotech reporter Dan Charles and author of Lords of the Harvest.

Professor Richard Sutch, one of the conference's organizers said, “This will be one of the major intellectual events on campus this fall and one with a good chance of ultimately effecting policy on the introduction of genetically modified plants, animals, and insects. UCR is already in the forefront of research on the science of GMOs. Now we are hoping to make a contribution to the complex policy debate.”

Total attendance to the conference is intended to be about eighty. Prospective speakers and participants are expected to come from a broad range of disciplines including the life sciences, social sciences and humanities, as well as industry representatives and decision makers, the media, government and representatives, and non-governmental organizations. In addition, outreach efforts will be initiated to encourage graduate student participation and participation of industry and government representatives.