ABOUT THE SBX.0 CONFERENCE SERIES

The BioBricks Foundation Synthetic Biology Conference Series (SBx.0 Conference) is the world’s foremost professional meeting in the field of synthetic biology. The BioBricks Foundation is the proud organizer of the conference series.

SB5.0 demonstrated the growing need for a significant international conference in SynBio.

Our most recent conference, SB5.0: The Fifth International Meeting on Synthetic Biology, took place June 15-17, 2011 on the campus of Stanford University. This was our most substantial and influential conference yet in the series and one that demonstrated the growing need for a significant international conference in synthetic biology.

SB5.0 built on the past successes of the SB conferences hosted at the following institutions: MIT (SB1.0), University of California, Berkeley (SB2.0), ETH, Zurich (SB3.0), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (SB4.0). SB5.0 drew +700 attendees from around the world. SB 5.0 was the first time in over two years that an open and self-defined global community came together to share, consider, debate, and plan efforts to understand life via building, to make biology easier to engineer, and to work together so that the ramifications of such efforts are most likely to benefit all people and the planet.

The sold-out SB5 Conference drew more than 700 SynBio researchers from around the world.

For context, SB4.0 was held at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology in October 2008. Since this time we have seen significant scientific and technical advances, including full genome synthesis, reliable synchronization of multi-cellular genetic oscillators, and opiate precursor biosynthesis. We have also experienced increased politicization of the field, including the U.S. Presidential Bioethics Commission’s consideration of synthetic biology, and ongoing popularization of such work through activities such as the iGEM. In addition, given the seven years since SB1.0 was held at MIT, we find a “second wave” of younger synthetic biology practitioners rising to prominence.

Taken together, June 2011 was the next “right time” for the world to come together to learn about and help define what is happening in the world of synthetic biology. The BioBricks Foundation is proud to be the organization presenting the conference to the world, and we are excited to begin planning SB6.0, now scheduled July 9-11, 2013 at Imperial College in the United Kingdom.