Click here to go directly to the registration page.

This retreat represents SynBERC's big six-year renewal site visit, the last important renewal visit on our way to the 10-year lifespan of SynBERC. We will be with the NSF for two days (Wednesday and Thursday), with time on Friday to hear privately from Affiliated Investigators about what's going on in their labs.

SynBERC's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) provide important advice for the thrusts and the testbeds. These advisors review progress reports, proposals for future work, and the overall scientific goals of the project. The SAB gives input to the SynBERC Leadership Team on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the SynBERC scientific program. The SAB has recently been expanded to include experts who can help us address emerging needs in the areas of industry and the Practices thrust.

WHEN: Sat to Mon, September 24-26, 2011 (Agenda)

(The final meeting on Monday morning is only for PIs, SAB, IAB and SynBERC staff. The Student Leadership Council is planning a company site visit same morning.)

Chris Voigt, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, will join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July. He will be an associate professor of biological engineering and co-director of a center for synthetic biology [details forthcoming]. Voigt serves as the leader of the Devices thrust and Industry Testbed within SynBERC.

SynBERC investigators Drew Endy and Vivek Mutalik represented the SynBERC BIOFAB: International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology at the BIO Pacific Rim Summit on December 12, 2010 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The very specialized workshop on advancements in synthetic biology was open to all attendees of the large annual meeting focused on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy.

SynBERC researcher George Church was awarded the 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science for innovative and creative contributions to genomic science, including the development of DNA sequencing technologies, as well as for his subsequent efforts to promote personal genomics and synthetic biology. The Institute noted his pioneering founding of the Personal Genome Project, which promises to spawn a new era of individualized medicine in which drug treatments and other therapies can be optimized by custom-matching them with a person's unique genetic makeup.

A web of Federal laws and guidelines regulates the engineering of biology. With authors Rocco Casagrande and Jennifer Byers of Gryphon Scientific, SynBERC Human Practices researcher Kenneth Oye has helped assemble a practical guide to synthetic biology regulations for academic and industry researchers that explains how the various regulations pertain to our daily research activities.

President Obama's Bioethics Commission was convened to examine the safety and ethical issues around the emerging field of synthetic biology. The Commission offered its assessment to President Obama on December 16, 2010. Among the Commission's eighteen key recommendations:

Thanks to everyone who participated and helped make the retreat and site visit a success. The interactions within SynBERC were extremely valuable, and the initial feedback from NSF has been very positive.

Please help us improve these meetings by completing this very brief survey.

The presentations and posters from the meeting will be posted as we receive them on our password-protected previous meetings page.

The Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) is a multi-institution research effort to lay the foundation for the emerging field of synthetic biology. SynBERC’s vision is to catalyze biology as an engineering discipline by developing the foundational understanding and technologies to allow researchers to design and build standardized, integrated biological systems to accomplish many particular tasks.