Call for Symposia
Call for Symposia - Deadline 5th, November, 2024
We're delighted to announce that the Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution is now accepting proposals for symposium for the 2025 Annual Meeting, taking place in Beijing, China, from July 20th – 24th, 2025. Selection of proposals will prioritize the interests of SMBE members, emphasizing innovative scientific developments while ensuring geographic and gender diversity among the participants. In light of the growing influence of new technologies, such as genetic editing, synthetic biology and AI, on evolution research (as outlined in our vision statement), we also encourage proposals that explore these topics.
SMBE 2025 will be held in the Beijing Conventional Center, with facilities allowing five parallel symposia to be held in the same building. We welcome proposals for symposia of 120 min duration, and the invited speaker will have 20 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions and 2 free minutes for participants to change symposium if they wish. Each contributed speaker will have 12 minutes, with 3 minutes for questions, and 2 free minutes for participants to change symposium if they wish. For the upcoming SMBE 2025 meeting, we are encouraging 5 min flash talks to give more opportunities to researchers around the globe to communicate their work. This means each symposium will accommodate 1 invited speaker, 2 contributed speakers, and 6 to 8 flash talks.
For each accepted symposium, the meeting will provide financial support up to 2,800 US dollars, along with fully covered conference registration for the invited speaker, to facilitate symposium organizers in attracting outstanding invited speakers. To submit your proposal please click on the link below and follow the instructions. Please complete and submit the form by 11:59pm GMT +8 November 5th, 2024. Successful applications will be confirmed by the end of November. Please email us at smbe2025@ioz.ac.cn for any questions.
Symposium proposals should include a description of the symposium (250 words max) and the name of the proposed invited speaker capable of delivering a talk of high quality and wide interest (each symposium will be limited to one invited speaker, however, you can nominate multiple invited speakers at this stage). At the time of proposal submission, the proposed invited speaker should have agreed to accept the invitation in principle. Please explain to the proposed invited speaker that the invitation is conditional on funding of the proposal. For the proposed invited speaker, please indicate whether they have been approached, whether they have expressed their interest in participating, and the likely topic for their talk. The symposium organizers will also select contributed speakers from the abstracts submitted by registered delegates.
Please click here to access the submission portal.
The final decision on the selection of symposia, invited and contributed talks will be made by the Local Organizing Committee (LOC). Criteria will include quality of the proposals, breadth of interest to SMBE membership, and representation of the diversity of SMBE membership among speakers.
The meeting will be held as a hybrid conference, but the speakers (keynote, invited, contributed) in principle should participate in person.
Best Regards,
SMBE and 2025 LOC
#SMBE25
