Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY This grant application seeks funding for the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting, which will be held on the campus of University of California at Santa Cruz from August 24-28, 2026. This meeting is a biennial, grass-roots meeting organized by and for the scientific community working at the cutting edge of developmental biology. The Santa Cruz meeting, which has run continuously since 1992, occupies a unique niche by combining international reputation with a relatively small size (~150 attendees) and a wholly new line-up of invited speakers at each gathering. As detailed in our application, we have planned for considerable participation by graduate students and postdocs by including short talks, posters, two work- shops aimed at career issues, and a career-perspective talk from a prominent scientist whose storied career pathway epitomizes the multi-disciplinary nature of developmental biology. The meeting format is based around single-platform sessions and three non-overlapping poster sessions so that all participants are engaged with the same topic and activity for the entirety of the meeting. The 2026 SCDB meeting will occur from August 24-28 and is organized around the theme: “Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere.” Our central goal is to highlight the deep reach of developmental biology across distinct realms of science. To this end, we have invited a set of speakers who all explore developmental principles but are driven by distinct ends and thus apply distinct approaches to a wide range of organisms. As a group, these scientists use a wise repertoire of state-of-the-art approaches to probe critical aspects of development across a broad range of model organisms and organoid systems. The work discussed at this meeting will positively impact human health by generating knowledge that is critical to our understanding of congenital diseases and to the development of tissue engineering strategies and stem cell- based therapies, as well as bioengineering approaches to food production and famine prevention. A second major goal will be to provide a forum for a broad range of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows to engage with and present their work to leaders in the field through talks, poster sessions, and informal discussions fostered by an isolated and relaxed campus setting.