History of the Kern Lipid Conference

The first Lipid Conference was organized in Aspen, Colorado, by Fred Kern, Jr., and Roland Hill, Jr., in 1977. After several meetings over the next decade, the conference was established as an annual event in 1987 and has continued, uninterrupted, to the present. Generous funding for this meeting has been obtained from the NIH, private research foundations, and pharmaceutical corporations. Indeed, both medical start-up groups and established pharmaceutical companies, as well as academic investigators, have found the conference to be a successful forum in which to share their recent investigations, obtain new information, and participate as faculty and students. Funding varies for each conference and is formally acknowledged in the annual program. The Lipid Conference was formulated with the following considerations:

The name of the conference was recently established as the Kern Lipid Conference, in recognition of its founder and leading proponent, Dr. Fred Kern, Jr., who lead the meeting through its first twenty years. The Kern Lipid Conference now meets annually in Vail, Colorado, in July or August, and admits an attendance limited to approximately 120 participants. A detailed history of the conference and its meetings is available below.