Dr. Elazer R. Edelman, director of the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center, is an electrical engineer who became a cardiologist and went on to do path-breaking work on the use of stents, small mesh tubes placed in narrowed or weakened arteries for the treatment of heart disease.

The development of new drugs can be an extremely lengthy, costly, and frustrating process, with an estimated investment by pharmaceutical companies reaching as high as $2-4 billion over more than a decade to bring a drug to market, often with little guarantee of substantial return.

Thousands of scientists from around the world will travel to San Diego, California, this week to hear from top researchers as they describe ground-breaking work in science, technology, engineering, and education.

But beyond learning about new findings on the frontiers of neuroscience, medicine, the environment, and others, many attendees of the 2010 AAAS Annual Meeting—which runs 18-22 February—will also be looking to advance their careers.