Northern Great Plains Lipid Conference: An International Conference Coalescing the Lipid Scientists in the Northern Great Plains

and the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Laboratory, June 11–12, 2016. One key element of our format is that it is focused on giving students an opportunity to hear leading scientist discuss topics on lipids, while also giving them an option to orally present their work at an international meeting in a highly collaborative environment. The 2015 meeting opened with the Lipids School and the topic was “A Look at Fundamentals” where I discussed multiple different techniques in lipid biochemistry, from extraction systems to colorimetric assays. After a short break, we had a session on Lipids and Health, with AOCS member Peter Jones giving a plenary lecture entitled “Dietary Lipids and Chronic Disease: What does the available evidence tell us?” This was followed by selected oral presentations from submitted abstracts from the faculty. After lunch, we continued the clinical nutrition theme with a session on Developing Dietary Guidelines for Lipids. This session was anchored by three plenary speakers; AOCS member Susan Raatz giving a talk entitled “Processes involved in setting the U.S. dietary guidelines for lipids”, which was followed by Maya Villeneuve discussing the Canadian perspective on lipid dietary guidelines in her talk entitled “The Canadian perspective on dietary recommendations for lipids”. These two talks were followed by AOCS member Matthew Picklo giving a talk entitled “Where are the gaps in the literature?” These talks all worked very well in giving details regarding how each nation viewed recommendations on dietary lipids, followed by a very good talk focused on what is known compared to what are myths in the field, which these myths really demonstrate what are gaps in our knowledge regarding lipid metabolism. This session was followed by a session giving graduate students an opportunity to give 15 min oral presentations. Following the oral presentations, there was an opportunity to view posters in a formal manner, although from the For years, groups at the University of North Dakota and at the University of Manitoba have discussed having a conference broadly covering topics related to lipids, but focused on nutrition and lipid biochemistry. But like many great ideas, too many items were on too many lists of too many people to make this a reality. Fast forward to discussions that started in 2014 between a number of faculty leading lipid biochemistry laboratories at the University of Manitoba and lead scientists at the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Laboratory, Agriculture Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Unlike previous efforts, these discussions persisted and started with the idea that several labs would get together and have a small meeting in which various projects would be discussed and the potential for collaborations assessed. However, with the Canadian Nutrition Society holding its 2015 meeting in Winnipeg, the option to expand this meeting involving only select institutions and laboratories into a much larger effort was seized upon and the founders invited me to join this process. Through our efforts, the “Northern Great Plains Lipid Conference” was born and the first meeting was held at St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba May 31 and June 1, 2015. In this issue of Lipids you will see the proceedings from this meeting. Some of these papers are full research articles, while others are timely, topical reviews focused on lipid biochemistry and metabolism. The unique format of this first meeting has been maintained and expanded for the 2016 meeting hosted by the University of North Dakota