Submissions close November 4

Community-proposed symposium proposals should span the range of interests of ASPB members, including exciting new scientific developments and interdisciplinary areas, and they should represent the demographics of our memberships. Due to the Centennial theme of Plant Biology 2024, the Program Committee welcomes proposers to have one or more proposed speakers highlight major historical milestones in their fields of interest.

Process: Symposium proposals will be reviewed and selected by the Plant Biology 2024 program committee for inclusion in the scientific program. Each symposium will receive one full registration that the submitter (session chair) can assign to the chair or a speaker (please see ASPB’s grant and funding page (insert hyperlink) for information on funding that may be available to defray costs of attending the conference).

Symposium Duration: Each concurrent symposium will be given 90-minute sessions, with 3 minutes allocated at the beginning for an introduction by the session chair and then five 20-minute slots for each speaker’s presentation. Each concurrent symposium speaker can use their 20 minutes as desired – we typically see about 15 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes for open questions from the audience.

Responsibilities of the Symposium Chair

Pre-event: Symposium Chairs are responsible for identifying, inviting, and confirming speakers for their session; however, kindly run your proposed slate of speakers through the Program Committee through the submission form and receive approval, and ASPB will issue a formal invitation to them.

During Event: Symposium Chairs will be required to moderate their symposium and associated discussion sessions. ASPB is committed to ensuring that the conference is a safe and respectful environment for all participants at all times. As such, moderator training will be made available to symposium chairs.

Community Proposed Concurrent Symposium Proposal Guidelines

Please review the following guidelines before submitting a concurrent symposium proposal:

  • To ensure that we have a high quality and inclusive conference, ASPB’s program and equity, diversity, and inclusion committees are collaborating in recruiting and selecting concurrent symposium proposals. The organizers should consider the ASPB speaker diversity rubric, particularly in regard to career stage, institution type, and identity.
  • Ideally, proposed speakers should not have spoken at recent Plant Biology conferences.
  • If desired, Symposium chairs may reserve one of the five speaking slots at their session for themselves, but there is no requirement for them to do so.
  • Individuals can only be listed as a symposium chair for one proposal (either concurrent session or workshop), although they can be listed as an invited speaker on another proposal. Preference will be given to organizers who have not chaired a concurrent session in the past two years.
  • An individual can only give one talk at the Plant Biology 2024 meeting, so in the event that a speaker is invited to two successful symposium applications, the organizers should consider alternate speakers.

Submission Elements

Proposed Concurrent Symposium Title: If selected, ASPB will display title with capitalization submitted on proposal.

Description: A 250-word (maximum) description of the proposed symposium which will be posted to the event website.

Symposium description should demonstrate how the proposal brings forward ASPB’s objectives in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as any additional information for the committee to make an informed review (250 words max).

Symposium Segment title (1 of 4/5 talks of the symposium)

Equity, diversity and inclusion statement: Describe how this symposium brings forward ASPB’s objectives in support of equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as any additional information for the committee to make an informed review (250 words or fewer)

Names, title, email, affiliation, and career stage of each speaker.

Target audience(s) for the symposium

You will be asked to select from a list of career stages.

You will be asked to write a short description of why this symposium will resonate with this audience.

Key topics: You will be asked to select from a list of topics.