While many ATS 2018 attendees have been gearing up for the conference, some have already been hard at work already. They came early to participate in programs for early career professionals—the Student Scholars Program, the Resident Boot Camp, and the ATS Fellows Track Symposium.

The Student Scholars Program offers 75 motivated medical, graduate, and nursing students the opportunity to attend the ATS International Conference for free.

“The conference is a great way to meet people and find a student mentor,” said Simone Norris, a graduate student at New York Medical College. “I hope to learn how to best analyze research, how to network with other professionals, and how to form collaborations for my own research.”

For Resident Boot Camp, more than 140 faculty provided large-group lectures, small breakout sessions, and skills-based workshops to 160 incoming fellows, giving them hands-on training and skills they can use on day one of their fellowship.

The ATS Fellows Track Symposium (FTS) allowed 225 fellows to attend 30 lectures and two skills-based sessions, following both an adult and a pediatric track and covering sepsis, COPD, lung cancer, asthma, and interventional pulmonology.

FTS attendee Peter Hountras, MD, a third year fellow at Northwestern University, says participants can listen to top people in their fields talk about a large range of topics. “It can be helpful for those taking their boards in the fall, and it is a great opportunity for a refresher before you set out in your career.”

The ATS Fellows Track Symposium is supported by educational grants from Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc., AstraZeneca LP, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Genentech Inc., and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. In-kind support is provided by FUJIFILM SonoSite, Inc., and ndd Medical Technologies.