A Gordon-Kenan Graduate Research Seminar (GKGRS) is a two-day meeting designed specifically for graduate students, post-doctoral students, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience. More than 80% of Gordon Research Conferences now have a corresponding Gordon Research Seminar. Dr. Nancy Gray, GRC President reports that the GRC Board has approved requiring all conferences to hold a corresponding GRS beginning in 2024. A total of 551 attendees participated in 14 Gordon-Kenan Graduate Research Seminars from August 13, 2022, to June 23, 2023. Average attendance per Gordon-Kenan Research Seminars was 39 attendees. The majority of attendees were young investigators, which included a total of 295 graduate students and 158 postdocs. Average attendance for these young investigators per Gordon-Kenan Research Seminar was 54% graduate students and 29% post-doctoral students.
Attendees represented regions throughout the world however more than 57% of attendees were from regions inside of North America. North Carolina was represented at the seminars in 2022 and in 2023 including participants from Duke University, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, North Carolina A&T State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since 2001, Kenan Institute support has helped leverage $11,273,161 from private & federal sources, and helped provide registration and travel support for 4,290 GKRS registrants, roughly 43% of all GKGRS participants. From 2001 to 2022, GKGRS/GRC Chairs have raised $4,072,666 from federal funding and $7,200,495 from private industry partners. During that time, 4,712 scientists from North Carolina have attended 3221 GRC conferences or seminars. In addition, NC State University scientists have participated as a speaker 307 times and have chaired 20 GRC