Mechanobiology Annual Symposium

Organized by the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology with support from the National Science Foundation, the Annual Mechanobiology symposium brings mechanobiology researchers from around the world together to discuss emerging issues in forces that control living systems in both plant and animal cells. Read more below to learn about our upcoming and past symposiums.

Send questions to:  cembinfo@seas.upenn.edu

The CEMB will be hosting a Postdoc Preview Day for prospective postdocs on the day preceding the conference. Meet CEMB faculty and discuss postdoc opportunities! Participants will receive travel and lodging to attend all 3 days.

To apply, complete the application form.

Email pariel@seas.upenn.edu with any questions. 

Focused on Mechanobiology and Mechanointelligence, the 6th Annual Symposium on Mechanobiology and CEMB Retreat was held at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA and streamed online on March 5-6, 2024. Requests for talk recordings may be sent to cembinfo@seas.upenn.edu.

Invited Speakers:

• Abigail Buchwalter Cool, UC San Francisco
• Daniel Cohen, Princeton
• Michael Dustin, Oxford
• Jacky Goetz, CRBS, INSERM
• Morgan Huse, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
• Sanjay Kumar, UC Berkeley
• Charlotte Kirchhelle, ENS Lyon
• Wesley Legant, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Karen Reddy, Johns Hopkins University
• Sarah Robinson, Sainsbury Laboratory
• Pere Roca-Cusachs, IBEC, University of Barcelona

Send questions to:  cembinfo@seas.upenn.edu

The CEMB will be hosting a Postdoc Preview Day for prospective postdocs on the day preceding the conference on March 4, 2024. Meet CEMB faculty and discuss postdoc opportunities! Participants will receive travel and lodging to attend all 3 days.

To apply, complete the application form.

Email wabree@seas.upenn.edu with any questions. 

Focused on MechanoImmunology and Epigenetics, the 5th Annual Symposium on Mechanobiology was held at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA and streamed online.

Invited Speakers:

• Adelin Barbacci, French National Centre for Scientific Research, National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment
• Marco Fritzsche, Rosalind Franklin Institute, Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology, University of Oxford
• Claire Hivroz, Institut Curie
• Andrew Holle, Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore
• Lance Kam, Columbia University
• Matthew Lang, Vanderbilt University
• Song Li, University of California, Los Angeles
• Yekaterina Miroshnikova, National Institutes of Health
• Maeli Melotto, University of California, Davis
• Guilherme Nader, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
• Verena Ruprecht, Centre for Genomic Regulation
• Kenneth Zaret, University of Pennsylvania

Send questions to:  cembinfo@seas.upenn.edu

On April 3, 2023, the CEMB hosted the first annual Postdoc Preview Day, for trainees interested in pursuing a postdoc with CEMB faculty. Participants received a travel grant to cover travel and lodging for the Symposium and the pre-conference.

To apply for 2024, please submit your CV and the names of up to three CEMB faculty you'd be interested in meeting with to wabree@seas.upenn.edu.

Focused on Mechanobiology and Metabolism, the 4th Annual Symposium on Mechanobiology was held as a virtual meeting via Zoom.

Invited Speakers:

• Thomas Bertero (Université Côte d'Azur)
• Kris A. DeMali (University of Iowa)
• Sirio Dupont (University of Padua)
• Peter Friedl (MD Anderson Cancer Center)
• Alan Howe (University of Vermont)
• Benoit Landrein (Université de Lyon)
• Naomi Nakayama (Imperial College London)
• Cindy Reinhart-King (Vanderbilt University)
• Arun Sampathkumar (Max Planck Institute)
• Valerie Weaver (University of California, San Francisco)

Focused on engineering mechano-intelligence, the 3rd Annual Symposium on Mechanobiology was held online on January 28, 2021. Invited speakers included:

• Alessandra Cambi, Associate Professor, Radboud University Medical Center
  “Mech(n)anobiology of antigen-presenting cells”
• Anja Geitmann, Dean, McGill University
  “Force, form and function - Morphogenesis and mechanics of the plant leaf epidermis”
• Olivier Hamant, Research Director, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
  "Intracellular mechanotransduction in plant cells"
• Boris Hinz, Professor, University of Toronto
  “Fibroblasts form a forceful and memorable connection with the matrix”
• Megan King, Associate Professor, Yale University
  “A biophysical view of the genome from coding and non-coding perspectives”
• Laurent Pieuchot, CNRS Researcher, Université de Haute Alsace
  “Curvotaxis in migrating cells and growing epithelia”
• Ning Wang, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  “The central role of cytoskeletal prestress in nuclear mechanotransduction and mechanomedicine”
• Sara Wickström, Associate Professor, Helsinki Institute of Life Science
  “Nuclear mechanotransduction: Regulation of cell fate and integrity”

The 2019 symposium was organized with support from the National Science Foundation.  This year, the symposium ran as a satellite meeting of the Society of Engineering Science, and took place at Washington University in St. Louis on October 13-15.   

This international symposium covered emerging issues in forces that control living systems in both plant and animal cells. Invited speakers included:

• Tobias Baskin, UMass Amherst
• Philip Bayly, WashU
• Siobhan Braybrook, UCLA
• José Dinneny, Stanford
• Adrienne Roeder, Cornell

The first international symposium covered emerging issues in forces that control living systems in both plant and animal cells. Invited speakers included:

• Ovijit Chaudhuri, Stanford
• Margaret Gardel, University of Chicago
• Roger Kamm, MIT
• Pakorn ‘Tony’ Kanchanawong, MBI/NUS
• John Lowengrub, UC Irvine
• Iris Meier, OSU
• Alex Mogilner, NYU
• Gabriele Monshausen, Penn State
• GV Shivashankar, MBI/NUS
• Doris Wagner, UPenn
• Yu-li Wang, CMU
• Valerie Weaver, UCSF