Scientific Session Chairs and Presenters

All presenters are strongly encouraged to preload their presentations before traveling to Baltimore for the Annual Meeting. SOT provides all confirmed Scientific Session presenters with login credentials to access the meeting’s AV portal to remotely load presentations. Links to the AV portal will be available in February 2019.

Once in Baltimore, all presenters should visit the Speaker Ready Room to view their presentation and ensure that everything is working properly. If you were unable to preload your presentation, you also may use the Speaker Ready Room to upload your presentation. The Speaker Ready Room is staffed with experts available to answer any presentation-related questions and address any presentation concerns.

Speaker Ready Room

Once onsite, all presenters should visit the Speaker Ready Room to view their presentation and ensure that everything is working properly. If you were unable to preload your presentation, you also may use the Speaker Ready Room to upload your presentation. The Speaker Ready Room is staffed with experts available to answer any presentation-related questions and address any presentation concerns.

Presentations should be loaded and previewed in the Speaker Ready Room—not in the Scientific Session rooms—at least 30 minutes prior to session start times.

Slide presentations should be in widescreen (16:9) presentation format: Instructions for Converting to a Widescreen (16:9) Presentation Format . For your benefit, SOT has created a PowerPoint Template of Required Slides for use by platform presenters, which is already in widescreen format. When using this template, each new slide added will be in a pre-determined format/style that maximizes readability and usefulness during platform presentations.

Location and Hours

Baltimore Convention Center
Room 327

Hours of Operation:

Saturday	4:00 PM–7:00 PM
Sunday	7:00 AM–5:00 PM
Monday	7:00 AM–5:00 PM
Tuesday	7:00 AM–5:00 PM
Wednesday	7:00 AM–5:00 PM
Thursday	7:30 AM–10:30 AM

Proposal Acceptance

All decisions regarding tentative acceptance are rendered in late June each year.

All sessions that are accepted initially are granted a tentative acceptance. Tentative acceptance allows session organizers to address any concerns brought to their attention by the Scientific Program Committee (SPC). These issues can include the number of presenters, diversity of presenters (affiliations or geography), etc. The SPC also reserves the right to accept a proposal contingent on the chair and co-chair altering the final presentation to the SPC’s preferred format, although the original proposal format suggestion by the proposer is given due consideration before this kind of change is requested.

Role and Responsibilities of the Session Chair

Ensure deadlines are met.
Provide SOT Headquarters with the complete contact information for all your presenters once tentative acceptance is granted.
Determine the presentation time for each presenter, including the time allotted for question-and-answer periods. Presentation timings are due to SOT Headquarters in mid-August
Notify SOT Headquarters immediately if there are changes to the presenter roster. Note: While recognizing that some changes will occur, the SPC reserves the right to reconsider a session if presenter substitutes cause a shift in the session’s focus that differs substantially from the original proposal.
Facilitate updates and changes during the Invited Presenter Submission Phase (see Finalizing the Session below for more information).
Communicate the decisions of the SPC to your nonmember presenters who applied for travel assistance.
Provide important information to your presenters as it becomes available.
Ensure that your session complies with SOT’s criteria for the care and use of animals in research .

Finalizing the Session

After a session has been granted tentative acceptance, the session chair should work with the co-chair and all presenters to finalize presentation titles and abstracts—a process known as the Invited Presenter Submission Phase, which occurs from mid-July to mid-August. Note: For all session types, each session chair must enter a complete, revised “overall abstract” that fully describes their presentation in detail and incorporates any suggestions from the Scientific Program Committee (SPC), as well as the individual abstracts for each presenter. For 80-minute sessions, individual abstracts for each presenter are necessary so the SPC can review any changes that were suggested for the presentations. However, for 80-minute sessions, only the overall abstracts will appear in the Annual Meeting publications and the mobile event app. Compete instructions will be sent to all session chairs for finalizing the sessions in July.

Final acceptance is granted after a formal round of review of the final session description and individual abstracts by the Scientific Program Committee in September.

Scheduling the Session

The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) spends many hours discussing and planning the layout of the Monday through Thursday scientific program. Several guidelines are considered during the scheduling:

Sessions endorsed by the same Specialty Section/Specialty Interest Group or SOT Committee should not be programmed to occur concurrently.

Sessions that cover similar topics, regardless of Specialty Section endorsement, are not to be programmed to occur concurrently.

No sessions will occur during the opening Plenary Lecture or the Keynote MRC Lecture.

No sessions will occur during the SOT/EUROTOX debate (usually on Monday during the sunset time block).

No sessions will occur during the SOT Annual Business Meeting (usually on Tuesday during the sunset time block).

The SPC considers all these factors and diligently reviews the proposals before finalizing the Scientific Session schedule in late September. When the schedule is released, it is considered final and will not be altered.

FAQs

Why are two sessions endorsed by the same group occurring on the same day and time or why do some Symposium or Workshop Sessions occur at the same time as a Poster or Platform Session on a similar topic?

While the SPC makes every effort not to schedule two sessions endorsed by the same group at the same time, there are uncontrollable variables which can interfere with the ability to guarantee sessions on similar topics or endorsed by the same group are not programmed concurrently. These variables can include:

Presenters participating in more than one Scientific Session.
Limited traveling schedules of some presenters.
Room size limitations. Room sizes vary from year to year based on the Convention Center and not all rooms have the same maximum capacity. The larger rooms are typically reserved for “hot topic” sessions.
Poster and Platform Sessions. As these are programmed in November, after the other Scientific Sessions have been programmed, the SPC makes every effort to program Poster and Platform Sessions during times when Scientific Sessions on a similar topic are not being held, but that is not always possible.

Why are there lunchtime sessions (80-minute Roundtable, Informational, or Education-Career Development Sessions)?

The 165-minute Scientific Sessions (Symposium, Workshop, Platform, and Regional Interest) are held in the regular morning (9:30 am to 12:15 pm) and afternoon (2:00 pm to 4:45 pm) timeframes. This limits the time blocks for 80-minute sessions to lunchtime (12:30 pm to 1:50 pm) and sunset (5:00 pm to 6:20 pm). With the Annual Business Meeting, SOT/EUROTOX debate, and the beginning of many SOT component group receptions occurring or starting during the sunset time block, the SPC typically prefers to program 80-minute sessions for the lunchtime block.

Why are there 90-minute sessions scheduled on Tuesday afternoon?

This is in response to previous concerns from both session presenters and attendees regarding the length of the S cientific Sessions at the SOT Annual Meeting and the short break times between 165-minute and 80-minute sessions. Programming 90-minute sessions on Tuesday afternoon is a pilot for the 2019 Annual Meeting. Depending on attendee and presenter feedback, SOT may continue to expand the 90-minute session programming for future meetings.

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