The 700-plus OINDP specialists expected to convene at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre December 6-8 for this year’s Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) meeting will notice a few small changes designed to further the meeting’s mission of encouraging inhalation research and to accommodate the growing numbers of delegates and exhibitors, organizers say. One immediately visible but minor change is in the nomenclature so that instead of DDL 28, this year’s meeting is called DDL 2017.
For the first time, the Siminhale COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action consortium will partner with DDL and will present a pre-conference symposium on the morning of December 6, prior to the beginning of the DDL meeting. The symposium, titled “Designing Inhalers for Children and Infants,” is free for students and £50 for industry and academic researchers.
Another notable change for DDL 2017 is the addition of the DDL Emerging Scientist Award, which has been introduced to reward researchers who have received their PhD or equivalent terminal degree within the past 15 years. The DDL Emerging Scientist Award fills in the gap between the Pat Burnell Award for early researchers and the DDL Lecture which is generally given by very established researchers, committee member Phil Haywood notes.
“We’ve tried to encourage inhalation science research all the way through the generations,” he says, “so it’s a matter of rewarding people typically in the 30-45 age range who have put a lot into this area over their careers and have developed a reputation in expanding inhalation science.”
The winner of the 2017 Emerging Scientist award will be named at DDL 2017 and will give a talk on the second day of the conference immediately following the DDL Lecture. This year’s DDL Lecture will be presented by Myrna Dolovich of McMaster University, founder of the annual Aerosol School, who will talk about “The evolving landscape in Inhalation Therapy in the last 60 Years.”
