Less than one month from now, nearly 4,000 biophysicists will submit abstracts of work they want to present at the Biophysical Society (BPS) Annual Meeting in San Francisco next February. They, along with the other 3,000 attendees, will come from very diverse research areas and from all parts of the world. Many may be the only ones doing biophysics in their labs.
This coming together is what gives the Annual Meeting the breadth of biophysics that cannot be experienced at any other meeting. That is what makes the BPS meeting so scientifically rich and rewarding for those who attend. Twenty symposia will cover topics that include the molecular origins of fiber generation that underlie neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, how channels and other membrane proteins signal across membranes to tell cells to grow or not to grow or to conduct current and carry information from one cell to the next, how genes are read out and genetic material is packaged, how cells change shape and how muscle contracts, how synapses fire, how power is generated in mitochondria, and how biological functions can be re-engineered in devices for practical applications or simply for better understanding them.
This rich program of symposia is complemented with four workshops on probing atomic interactions in cells, modeling biological complexity, the latest developments in imaging in cells and whole animals, and the latest toolboxes to study biomembranes. Last but not least, a major highlight of the meeting will be the National Lecture by Jennifer Doudna, the co-developer of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique, who will explain the biophysical underpinning of this method that is currently revolutionizing biology. For students, the BPS meeting provides an introduction to the exciting world of biophysics and the many directions open to them, not to mention the numerous professional, networking, and educational programs that can help guide them. How many of us remember our first Biophysical Society Annual Meeting? When we gave our first poster presentation?
How many of us remember when we were first selected to give an oral platform presentation? When we came face-to-face with our scientific heroes, with our competitors, and with like-minded scientists from other countries? The BPS meeting has helped us meet new collaborators, find new mentors and postdocs, develop new research areas and grow professionally. It is where we all found our home. In these divisive and uncertain times, biophysics as a discipline and the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting as an event exemplify the benefits and progress that can be achieved by bringing people together.
Biophysics, THE quintessential interdisciplinary field bridging the many disciplines within the physical and life sciences, demonstrates that progress in understanding how biology works can only be made by breaking down barriers, bringing together researchers with different perspectives, and approaches, regardless of background, gender, ethnicity, or country of origin, to share new ideas and discoveries. With all of biology becoming more quantitative, there is no better time to be a biophysicist. And no better time for biophysicists to come together, building bridges between the various disciplines of science, including those of biological engineering, to develop new models, approaches, and techniques to understand how biology works at all levels — from molecules to cells, systems, and whole organisms. I encourage you to bring your students, postdocs, and yourself to San Francisco this February to see what together, biophysicists can do. —Lukas Tamm, Biophysical Society President
