Thank you for your interest and eagerness to participate in the Workshop on Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems (M-CELS). Unfortunately, due to rapidly changing circumstances with COVID-19, we feel that it’s in the best interests of our growing M-CELS community to postpone this meeting. We have not yet determined a new date, but we will be in touch as soon as we do. If you have already reserved a hotel room at the Bethesda Marriott, please cancel your reservation - the hotel will be expecting this.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
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Soliciting student abstracts for an upcoming workshop on Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems (M-CELS), to be held at the Bethesda Marriott in Bethesda, MD from May 26-28, 2020. This 2.5-day workshop, described below, is funded by generous support from the NSF.
Graduate students and postdocs in all programs related to M-CELS (including medical students) are eligible to apply for an M-CELS workshop travel award to support travel costs and lodging in Bethesda. Winners will be required to present a poster during the workshop poster session.
Abstracts can be submitted here.
The deadline for applying is February 15, 2020.
In addition, registration is filling up so if you are interested in attending, please register soon.
If you are able and interested to attend, please register here.
Participation in the workshop (including registration and meals) will be covered. Unfortunately, we are unable to cover your travel and hotel costs, although we have a group rate set up at the Bethesda Marriott. For those of you from out of town, we hope the timing and location will allow you to meet with colleagues at NIH, NSF, and other federal agencies during your trip. Feel free to pass this invitation along to others who you think may be interested.
Workshop Description:
Multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS) are purpose-driven living systems with multiple interacting living components. They are engineered for specific goals or functions but take emergence into account during the design process, allowing the final system to emerge through natural and non-natural biological processes. M-CELS research is intended to provide a fundamental engineering understanding that enables a quantitative approach bridging between single cells and organs or organisms. The field is still developing, so M-CELS as a field of research is still rapidly expanding.
As these technical capabilities and scientific understanding grow, it is critical to address the full scope of M-CELS research and applications, their manufacture, their eventual impact on the international economy and US competitiveness, their standardization and regulation, and the ethical issues that will inevitably arise. This includes issues such as standards and elements of a pragmatic system for M-CELS, such as regulations and policy, economics and international competitiveness, and clinical and translational research.
This workshop will bring together many of the leaders in the field to explore the technical, ethical, and societal challenges of building M-CELS. In the past few years, significant research advances have been made, paving the way for more practical conversations around issues such as regulation, public engagement, and manufacturing. A primary goal of this event will be to build capacity for societally-responsible M-CELS research and translation by convening targeted conversations around existing and entirely new applications, design principles, manufacture, ethics, policy, communication, diversity, manufacturing, and regulation. We anticipate that participation in the workshop will lead to cross-disciplinary collaborations among attendees and a shared understanding of the path forward for M-CELS.
Confirmed speakers:
- Adam Feinberg, Carnegie Mellon University
- Anjelica Gonzalez, Yale
- Beth Pruitt, UCSB
- Bruce Tromberg, NIBIB
- Carolyn Johnson, Washington Post
- Chris Austin, NCATS
- Dan Rock, Amgen
- Danilo Tagle, NCATS
- Dave Rampulla, NIBIB
- David Sittenfeld, Museum of Science, Boston
- Don Ort, UIUC
- Fred Kronz, NSF
- Hemmie Chang, Foley Hoag
- Insoo Hyun, Harvard
- Jianping Fu, University of Michigan
- Joseph Wu, Stanford
- June Medford, Colorado State University
- Kaiming Ye, SUNY Binghamton
- Kevin Esvelt, MIT
- Kit Parker, Harvard
- Kyung Sung, FDA
- Leah Ceccarelli, University of Washington
- Mahmud Farooque, ASU
- Maribel Vazquez, Rutgers University
- Mary Maxon, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs
- Matthew Sample, McGill
- Megan Palmer, Stanford
- Melissa Kemp, Georgia Tech
- Michael Helmrath, Cincinnati Children's Hospital
- Nas Zahir, NCI
- Natalie Kuldell, BioBuilder/MIT
- Nita Farahany, Duke
- Paul Sheehan, DARPA
- Pep Pamies, Editor, Nature Biomedical Engineering
- Peter Marks, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA
- Rashid Bashir, UIUC
- Richardae Araojo, Office of Minority Health and Health Equity, FDA
- Ritu Raman, MIT
- Robert Mulroy, Partner Therapeutics
- Roger Kamm, MIT
- Ron Weiss, MIT
- Rosemarie Hunziker, Connexon Life Sciences Consulting
- Sheng Lin-Gibson, NIST
- Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan
- Silvia Velasco, Broad Institute
- Sohi Rastegar, NSF
- Sung Jin Park, Emory
- Todd McDevitt, Gladstone Institutes
- Tom Bollenbach, ARMI
- Valerie Gouon-Evans, BU
- Wei Sun, Tsinghua University