ISBR2022 PROGRAM OVERVIEW

ISBR2022’s program will be developed around the central theme of Advancing science in support of sustainable bio-innovation and will offer attendees a unique opportunity to engage with the world’s leading experts on the diverse range of topics relevant to sustainable bio-innovation. The symposium theme will be expounded through plenary sessions focusing on four sub-elements of sustainable bio-innovation, namely society, risk analysis, governance and technology under the session themes –

• Ensuring social license for bio-innovation.
• Fit-for-purpose governance frameworks for sustainable bio-innovation.
• Risk analysis for persistent engineered genetic traits.
• Sustainable biotechnologies for a changing world.

Invited keynote speakers for ISBR2022 include:

• Prof Kevin Esvelt (MIT Media Lab),
• Prof Bill Powell (SUNY), and
• Dr. Jim Carrington (Danforth Center).

In addition, a wide range of topic-specific parallel sessions and workshops will be presented. Most of these will be directly proposed and organized by ISBR members and other interested parties, while some will be compiled from the individual papers submitted by attendees under the open call for abstracts. The ISBR’s tradition of offering open calls for organizing parallel sessions and workshops helps ensure the relevance and quality of the program and representation from all relevant stakeholders and sectors. While parallel sessions offer a more structured opportunity to communicate the latest scientific findings and developments, workshops provide opportunities for more interaction and deeper exploration of a specific topics. 

Abstract submission topics for ISBR2022 are listed below and encompass more traditional focus areas like GMOs, food & feed safety, ERA and IPM, as well as more recent ones like genome editing, gene drives and science communication & engagement.

• Gaining social license for bio-innovation
• The ethics of biotechnology research, development, and application
• Ensuring the sustainability of bio-innovation
• Risk communication in regulatory risk analysis
• Discovery science in support of risk analysis
• Elevating science in regulatory frameworks: Moving toward trait-based regulation
• Advancing problem formulation for effective decision-making
• Data requirements for risk characterization and monitoring
• The purpose and practice of post-market monitoring
• The role of public and private standards in the governance of biotechnology
• The pros and cons of regulatory harmonization for bio-innovation
• Bio-innovation for reducing and mitigating climate change
• Bio-innovation for public and personal health
• Bio-innovation for food security and sovereignty

Poster sessions and selected Pecha Kucha presentations will also form an integrated part of the program to allow as many attendees as possible to participate in the formal symposium program. Innovative e-based systems will be implemented where possible to enable better communication and the engagement of the global community with the ISBR2022 program.

Finally, various social activities are planned to provide further network opportunities between the approximately 500 academic, government, non-government, industry and private attendees that are expected.