This award, which is co-funded by Systems and Synthetic Biology/MCB, and Biotechnology, Biochemical and Biomass Engineering/CBET, will support a symposium that highlights the recent advances in genome editing technologies. These technologies have enormous implications for advancing fundamental research in Molecular Biology, and applications in Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology. The meeting brings scientists from the field of genome editing together with practitioners in molecular and cellular biology, synthetic biology and biotechnology to (1) accelerate the further development of these tools for specific applications. (2) hold community discussions about ideas, methods, problems and solutions; (3) foster the initiation of new multidisciplinary projects and collaborations to advance modern science.
The Symposium will be held in Big Sky, Montana, January 11-16, 2015. Over 75 prominent scientists and leaders from academia and industry are part of the organizing committee and speaker list, with an overall attendance to be expected of around 200. The organizers have made a genuine effort to ensure balance in terms of demographics and representation from underrepresented group, as well as participation from academia, industry, government and non-profit organizations. The Symposium program includes Keynote addresses, scientific talks, short talks selected from abstracts, poster sessions, andtwo workshops to encourage communications between junior and senior scientists and engineers.