Calendar of events, awards and opportunities

Every week, we update this list with new meetings, awards, scholarships and events to help you advance your career. If you’d like us to feature something that you’re offering to the bioscience community, email us with the subject line “For calendar.” ASBMB members’ offerings take priority, and we do not promote products/services. Learn how to advertise in ASBMB Today.

Nov. 29: Abstracts due for virtual undergrad conference

Attention undergraduate researchers: The National Conference on Undergraduate Research is going to be held virtually April 4–8. The conference welcomes student presenters from all institutions of higher learning and from all disciplines. Submit your abstract by Nov. 29. Learn more about abstract requirements and how to submit.

Nov. 30: Scholarship for Black STEM students

The African American Leadership Society of the United Way of South Hampton Roads will award one-time scholarships to qualifying students pursing STEM degrees in 2022. Each recipient will receive up to $10,000. See the criteria and apply by Nov. 30.

Check your eligibility for a travel award for  #ASBMB2022

The ASBMB annual meeting will be held in person in Philadelphia in April. The society offers more than $270,000 in awards to assist first authors presenting research at the annual meeting. Here are the award categories:

• Dependent Care Grant
• Early Career Faculty Award
• Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Researcher Award
• Graduate Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award supported by the ASBMB Minority Affairs Committee
• Student Chapters Award
• Undergraduate Faculty Award

Application submission instructions and guidelines

Important dates

• Nov. 30: First deadline for abstracts (if you want to be considered for a talk, submit by this date)
• Dec. 6: Deadline for travel award applications (at 5 p.m. Eastern)
• Dec. 15: Last-chance abstract submissions begin
• Jan. 27: Last-chance abstract submissions end
• Feb. 7: Early registration (largest discount) ends
• Feb. 8: Advance registration (smaller but still significant discount) begins
• March 18: Advance registration ends
• March 19: Regular registration begins

Dec. 1: Deadline for ACS Merck award nominations

The American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee's Merck Research Award is given to eight people, all of whom give lectures at a special symposium at the society's fall national meeting. Nominees must be in their third or fourth year of grad school. Importantly, this is an award for, as the website states, "female-identified individuals and persons assigned female at birth." Learn more.

Dec. 1: Deadline for HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is accepting applications from underrepresented scientists for its Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program. Up to 25 fellows will win grants for postdoctoral training and will be eligible for continued funding as they begin their independent careers. Learn about eligibility and application materials.

Dec. 11: Making inclusive and interprofessional strides

The American Association of Anatomists has a virtual meeting coming up on Dec. 11 that might be of interest to people in the BMB world. Former ASBMB staffer Joanna Kotloski, who now works at AAA, pointed out to us that some of the abstract categories (neurobiology, histology, cellular and molecular biology, and developmental biology) are in the ASBMB lane. The event, hosted by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, is on Dec. 11, but you have to register by Dec. 10. We usually prefer to list only free events on this calendar, and this one is free for AAA members, but the fees for nonmembers are decidedly reasonable, so we're making an exception. Learn more.

Jan. 2: AAAS mass media fellowship application due

The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship has earned much praise over the years for training scientists to become professional science writers and communicators. The application period for the next 10-week summer program is Jan. 2. We strongly encourage emerging scicommers, in particular those who wish to work in newsrooms, to consider applying. Learn more about the program.

Jan. 10: Submit an abstract for the ASBMB Deuel Conference on Lipids

The ASBMB Deuel conference — to be held March 1–4 in Monterey, Calif. — is a must-attend event for leading lipids investigators.

“We'd love to bring in people who might not have cut their teeth in the lipid metabolism field but have found their way to studying lipids. In many cases, that's where you get the most exciting, unusual and off-the-wall presentations, and that can spark collaborations that may have otherwise not have happened,” co-organizer Russell DeBose–Boyd told ASBMB Today.

This year's theme is "Location, location, location: How lipid trafficking impacts cell signaling and metabolism." In an interview, co-organizer Arun Radhakrishnan explains it this way: “In recent years, we have begun to gain deep insights into the mechanisms of lipid trafficking. We thought it would be great to have a meeting focusing on that aspect and what those what these new insights are telling us about cell signaling and metabolism.”

The early registration deadline is Dec. 6. Abstracts are being accepted through Jan. 10. Regular registration ends Feb. 1. See the program.

Jan. 15: iBiology's Share Your Research Competition

This is an opportunity for eight early-career scientists. Here's how it works: You submit a one-minute video about your research for a general biology audience, along with your CV. If you're selected, you get to participate in iBiology's science communication course in April for free. You'll get coaching and ultimately develop a final video (20 minutes long), which will be promoted on the iBiology website as part of the Share Your Research Series. Learn more and apply. (We also want to point out that iBiology has several self-paced, free courses.)

Jan. 23: Papers about STEM education and workforce due

The Journal of Science Policy & Governance and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, have launched a call for papers on "Re-envisioning STEM Education and Workforce Development for the 21st Century." The journal will produce a special issue with the winning submissions. The deadline is Jan. 23. ASBMB Today contributor Adriana Bankston is the journal's CEO and managing publiusher. She told us in an email: "For the issue, we are seeking op-eds and policy position papers for re-envisioning the landscape in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and building forward a future that is focused on equity and inclusion, access to technology, and aligning training opportunities with workforce demands. First, second and third place competition winners will be awarded cash prizes." Here's the call for submissions.

Jan. 31 & March 31: Apply to host symposium for grad students and postdocs

The Federation of European Biochemical Societies and its partners are looking for institutions to host the FEBS-IUBMB-ENABLE Symposium in 2023 and in 2024 for graduate students and postdocs. Institutions interested in hosting the 2023 event must apply by Jan. 31. Those interested in hosting the 2024 event have until March 31. Note that the symposia are to be organized by the students/postdocs. Learn more.

Feb. 9: Lasker essay contest time

The Lasker Foundation will begin accepting essays for its annual contest Feb. 9. The contest is open to medical school students, interns, residents and fellows; doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in biomedical sciences; and graduate students in public health or other health professions programs. Winners will receive up to $5,000. Monetary prizes will be directed to the winners' institutions to be used toward the winners' educational expenses. The topic will be announced in early February, and winners will be announced in early July. Learn more.

July 7–10: O-GlcNAc regulation of cellular physiology and pathophysiology

This conference, to be held in person in Athens, Ga., will address the multitude of roles that the O-GlcNAc protein modification has in regulating nuclear and cytosolic proteins. It will bring together researchers from diverse fields to share their research, tools and experience in O-GlcNAc biology. The organizers are Gerald Hart and Lance Wells, both of the University of Georgia. Learn more.

July 21–24: Evolution and core processes in gene expression

Coming to an in-person venue in the summer of 2022: The focus of this meeting is to discuss the most recent insights into the cis-regulatory code, how cis-regulatory information is read out by transcription factors, signaling pathways and other proteins, how cellular diversity is created during development and how we can study this problem using cutting-edge genomics technology and computational methods.

The meeting will simultaneously examine the problem from an evolutionary perspective: how cis-regulatory elements evolve, how regulatory variation affects gene expression and phenotypes, how these changes have shaped development and parallel evolution, and how noise affects regulatory circuits and their evolution.

Stay tuned for abstract and registration deadlines.

Aug. 14–18: Mass spectrometry in the health and life sciences

This five-day conference will be an international forum for discussion of the remarkable advances in cell and human protein biology revealed by ever-more-innovative and powerful mass spectrometric technologies. The conference will juxtapose sessions about methodological advances with sessions about the roles those advances play in solving problems and seizing opportunities to understand the composition, dynamics and function of cellular machinery in numerous biological contexts. In addition to celebrating these successes, we also intend to articulate urgent, unmet needs and unsolved problems that will drive the field in the future. Registration and abstract submission begins Nov. 1. Abstracts are due may 16. Learn more.

Call for virtual scientific event proposals

The ASBMB provides members with a virtual platform to share scientific research and accomplishments and to discuss emerging topics and technologies with the BMB community.

The ASBMB will manage the technical aspects, market the event to tens of thousands of contacts and present the digital event live to a remote audience. Additional tools such as polling, Q&A, breakout rooms and post event Twitter chats may be used to facilitate maximum engagement.

Seminars are typically one to two hours long. A workshop or conference might be longer and even span several days.

Prospective organizers may submit proposals at any time. Decisions are usually made within four to six weeks.

Propose an event.