Conference: Envisioning Developmental Biology For the Future

Developmental biology research focuses on studying how living organisms are formed and change across time, space, and scale. The questions asked in the field are crucial to understanding life and the mechanisms that drive it. Despite this importance, the field is in danger of being left behind if it is unable to incorporate more innovative and technologically advanced approaches.

Conversely, those that use these approaches have not necessarily been trained in fundamental developmental biology concepts and findings. These issues exist in both animal and plant model systems and are reflected as decreased impactful publications, buy-in with students and support from funding institutions. As such, the field is in danger of becoming less relevant compared to related fields like stem cell research, bioengineering, and systems and synthetic biology.

This NSF-funded workshop will bring scientists in the field together to identify problems holding the field back and define actionable solutions to these problems. The overall goal of the workshop is to bring community stakeholders, innovators, and leaders together to identify ways to incorporate new technologies and innovative approaches into this crucial field of research.

Further, the workshop aims to define opportunities for the field to provide more significance, build upon the vast knowledge generated by developmental biology and positively impact society. The opinions of American developmental biology researchers nationally will be collected and then workshop recommendations publicly disseminated.

An identity crisis in the developmental biology community has developed over many years creating inequity in discovery and opportunity. Specifically, scientists who have access to significant funding and infrastructure are able to ask technologically advanced questions, but have strayed from the traditional tenets of the field. Those who have less access to resources or who focus on traditional developmental biology questions are being left behind in the race to generate big data.

This conference/workshop will bring scientists in the field together to identify problems holding the field back and define actionable solutions. The 2.5-day event includes presentations and small group discussions with a focus on defining and discussing 1) New Technology in Developmental Biology, 2) Foundational/Traditional Approaches in Developmental Biology, 3) Current Funding Opportunities, and 4) Creating Interdisciplinary Teams in Developmental Biology.

Participants will become a “think tank” of scientists from multiple developmental biology-related disciplines. The intellectual merit of the workshop is that the think tank will 1) identify specific problems in the field that have inhibited innovation and impactful discoveries and will 2) define tangible solutions to the problems in slowing the progress in developmental biology.

The expected products will be white papers published in open access journals that detail developmental biology community needs, holes in funding apparatuses, frameworks for interdisciplinary innovative collaborations, pedagogical recommendations and creative solutions to create equity of resources and maximum impact across the community. With regards to the broader impacts of the workshop, researchers across multiple institutions and career stages with diverse backgrounds and life experiences, and who study plant and animal models, will come together to synthesize ideas that will create interdisciplinary opportunities in the field of developmental biology.

The participants will also identify gaps in funding, paths to interdisciplinary collaborations, and will gather ideas from the stakeholders that will guide the community to a more inclusive, equitable, and innovative place. After the workshop, the broader developmental biology community will provide their input via a public open-access survey. Perceived problems and proposed solutions will be disseminated to the wider community via peer-reviewed perspective papers and editorials in established journals and in social media.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.