19 March 2020
Members of ABLE’s Board of Directors had an emergency meeting Tuesday, and we decided to cancel our upcoming conference this June at the University of California – San Diego.
The Board, including conference hosts, found there was no possible way to hold a conference or even delay this decision considering the very uncertain future we are all facing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Read the full email for more details.]Sincerely,
Mark Wolansky
ABLE President 2019-2021
The 42nd Annual ABLE Conference was originally planned to be held at the University of California San Diego, June 23 – 26, 2020, but was cancelled due to concerns about the COVID-19 virus.
UC San Diego is situated in the town of La Jolla, about 10 miles from downtown San Diego. The campus was founded in 1960, growing out of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography that has been located on the San Diego coast since 1905. The original plans for the campus only included a research institute and graduate school. However, Roger Revelle, then director of Scripps, convinced the UC Regents of the need for undergraduate teaching in the San Diego area, and the university adopted a plan for the expansion of the campus to a full university. The campus currently has approximately 30,000 undergraduates and 8500 graduate students. UC San Diego and the greater La Jolla area comprise one of the nation’s major research hubs, and includes the Scripps Institute for Oceanography, the Salk Institute, and a host of other research organizations and biotechnology companies. San Diego is also home to San Diego State University and the University of San Diego.
In addition to its abundance of academic activity, San Diego is a well-known vacation destination. Some of the local points of interest include the beach resorts along the La Jolla waterfront, Balboa Park, with its museums and other cultural activities, Coronado Island and the famous Hotel Del Coronado, The San Diego Zoo and Safari Parks, and Sea World.
June weather in San Diego is temperate with often overcast skies. Daytime high temperatures average around 72° F (22° C), and nighttime lows are around 62° F (17° C). Rain is unlikely but expect overcast mornings and evenings. Some of our evening events will be cold outside, so pack a warm sweater.
The Conference and Getting Around the UC San Diego Campus
The conference center would have been in Tata Hall, our new research and undergraduate laboratory building in the Muir College area of campus. Conference registration was to be in the Tata Hall lobby. The majority of workshops were to be held in the teaching laboratories on the second and third floors of Tata Hall. Other workshops were to be held in nearby buildings including the Natural Sciences Building and Bonner Hall. All of the conference workshops and events that were to occur on campus were an easy 5-minute walk from each other and from on-campus housing. Important conference locations were indicated on the conference map and an interactive campus map can be found here.
Your ABLE 2020 Hosts,
