ATS 2015 continues today.

The ATS Plenary Session today will build on the theme of moving forward, with ATS asking five leaders in pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine to answer a simple question in seven minutes or less: What is the future of your field?

“They can answer however they wish, drawing on their views of science, clinical care, education, advocacy, and global health. I cannot predict how they will respond, but given their respective bodies of work, I am sure it will be both entertaining and fascinating,” says ATS President Thomas W. Ferkol, MD, the Alexis Hartmann professor in the pediatrics division of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonary Medicine and director of the division of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonary Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.

The Plenary Session will be from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. in Mile High Ballroom 4 A-D (Lower Level) Colorado Convention Center.

“The Plenary Session has traditionally been the venue in which the current president discusses the state of the Society and passes the gavel to the incoming president to signal the rotation of ATS leadership,” Dr. Ferkol says. “For me, it will be a bittersweet moment in a place of great personal significance—it was just four years ago during this session in Denver that I joined the Executive Committee as ATS secretary-treasurer. But just as we will reflect on our success over the past year, we will learn what Atul Malhotra, the incoming president has planned for the Society’s future.”

The five speakers will be:

• Arthur Slutsky, MD, professor in the departments of medicine, biomedical engineering, and surgery at the University of Toronto, former director of the university’s Critical Care Division, and vice president of research at St. Michael’s Hospital
• Allan I. Pack, MBChB, PhD, the John Miclot Professor of Medicine, director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology, and chief of the sleep division at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• John B. West, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Physiology at the University of California, San Diego
• William J. Martin II, MD, dean and professor of the College of Public Health at the Ohio State University, Columbus
• Erika Von Mutius, MD, MS, head of the asthma and allergy department of the Dr. von Hauner Children‘s Hospital of the University of Munich, Germany

The morning also will feature the introduction of the ATS slate of officers, an in memoriam presentation, and remarks from Dr. Ferkol and Atul Malhotra, MD, the Ken Moser Professor of Medicine and chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at University of California, San Diego.