CSP - GASB II Conference - Synthetic Biology Made in Germany
Abstract
The German Association for Synthetic Biology ??? GASB e.V. is organizing the GASB II Conference -Synthetic Biology Made in Germany. The GASB II is the follow-up of the successful opening conferenceGASB I, which took place in November 2017 in Marburg, Germany, when our association was founded.More than 100 participants joined the conference to experience 26 scientific talks, a panel discussion aswell as a poster session. The event got an overwhelmingly positive feedback and participants expressedthe necessity of a recurring event to connect and strengthen the SynBio community in Germany.Accordingly, the GASB II conference will be addressing all SynBio researchers and stakeholders inGermany. Since Synthetic Biology is still a young and emerging field of science at the interface of biologyand engineering, it has a big potential to shape the bio-based industries of the future, to advance thedevelopment of novel medical treatments and to transform basic as well as applied research. In 2018 theGASB II conference will take place in Berlin on the 27th and 28th of September at the prestigiousHarnack-House, where Max Planck and Albert Einstein already presented their innovative work.Participants will have the opportunity to witness state-of-the-art research presentations of top-levelkeynote speakers but also postdocs and PhD candidates can apply for talks and posters in order topresent their current work. Besides scientific sessions there will be visionary talks about the future ofSynthetic Biology as well as a panel discussion to debate ethical and societal implications. Additionalinteraction and discussions may take place during a poster session.This conference is supposed to serve as a platform for SynBio in Germany and to be a platform forexchanging ideas, to broaden horizons and to shape the future of Synthetic Biology in Germany.Community building is one of the objectives of this conference. Up to now, scientists in Germany workingin the field of Synthetic Biology are poorly connected. It is hence of importance to strengthen the sense ofbelonging to the same scientific discipline, identifying researchers as Synthetic Biologists and to enhanceinteraction and collaborations. In order to bring together all scientists from the field on a national level, weprovide a platform and a framework to develop such a community. Additionally, it opens the possibility ofdiscussing about the definition of Synthetic Biology within Germany as well as to develop a roadmap forthis field. In many countries, agendas for Synthetic Biology have been developed to guide thedevelopments in Synthetic Biology. With GASB and the GASB II conference we facilitate the formation ofworking groups being devoted to this objective of compiling a roadmap for Synthetic Biology in Germany.Since Synthetic Biology is associated with cutting-edge technology, which is bending the boundaries ofclassic biosciences and the genetic code, raising awareness for ethical issues that may arise with fastpace technologies such as CRISPR will be addressed during the conference. We want to encourageresponsible research and knowledge exchange between different disciplines in order to have a saferesearch field. Another aspect of that is the public perception of the field, to which we also want to drawthe attention of scientists. Since only few researchers have a clear plan of how to communicate theirscience, we want to provide training to teach scientists the importance of public perception and how tobest get their message across.The previously described setup and aim of the conference describes the manifold benefits for thesynthetic biology community. The strengthening of the synbio community holds also many benefits for theOffice of Naval Research. Germany as a Nato Partner of the USA is highly active in the area of basic aswell as applied research. There have been and will be a fruitful interactions and exchanges of ideas,research results as well as experts in many fields. With the GASB
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 19, 2018
- Source ID
- N629091812177
Entities
People
- Nicolas Krink
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy