Annual Meetings

Upcoming Meetings

SMBE 2010 Annual Meeting
Call for External Symposia

The call for external symposia is now open. If you are interested in
organising an external symposium for the SMBE 2010 conference, please
e-mail your proposal to smbe2010symposia@biomserv.univ-lyon1.fr before
December 18th, 2009.

Visit the "Symposia" page of http://smbe2010.univ-lyon1.fr for
detailed information.

The conference will be held in Lyon, France, July 4-8, 2010. See http://smbe2010.univ-lyon1.fr
for the latest information.


Previous Meetings

The 2009 SMBE conference was held at University of Iowa, Iowa on June 3-7, 2009.
Website

The 2008 SMBE conference was held at Universitat De Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain, June 5-8 2008.
Website | Schedule

The 2007 SMBE conference was held at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 24-28, 2007.
Website | Speakers | Schedule

The 2006 SMBE conference was held at Arizona State University, Arizona, May 24-28, 2006.
Website | Confirmed Speakers | Preliminary Schedule

The 2005 SMBE conference was held at Auckland Convention Center, New Zealand, June 2005.
Overview | Speakers and Keynotes | Workshop | Programme | Exhibitors

The 2004 SMBE conference was held at Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, June 17-20, 2004
Overview | Speakers | Schedule | Abstracts | Posters

The 2003 SMBE conference was held in Newport Beach, California, June 26-29, 2003


Memo to SMBE Meeting Organizers 

This brief memo highlights some of the issues for SMBE meeting organizers.  We also encourage you to contact previous organizers and SMBE council members for advice/feedback.

  1. Each year, the Society contributes funds to support the annual meeting. You should check with the President on the current level of funding. Should your meeting make a profit, the Society would appreciate the return of any available funds, although you have no obligation to do so. We also suggest that you look into event insurance, as the Society does not accept liability in the case of a loss.
  2. It is important that online meeting registration and online abstract submission be up and running sufficiently early, and in a modality that is easy for people to use.  Be sure that the registration pricing fully implements the current SMBE policy with respect to meeting fees for SMBE members vs. nonmembers.  Also be sure that submission forms for abstracts include the means and necessary information for eligible presenters to indicate that they wish to be considered for SMBE student and postdoc prizes.
  3. Meeting organizers are encouraged to work towards involving as many young molecular evolutionists as possible. Costs to younger scientists should be minimized, as circumstances permit by providing registration fees for graduate students and postdocs, and by making affordable lodgings available.  The meetings should also include adequate forums for student and postdoc presenters.  
  4. Meeting organizers should keep in mind that SMBE is committed to inclusion, and that this commitment should be reflected in the selection of presenters at meetings. We value diversity, including but not limited to gender, ethnicity, nationality, research area, institution type, and previous involvement in SMBE meetings.

Walter M. Fitch Prize

Beginning with the first annual meeting of the SMBE in 1993, the Walter M. Fitch Symposium has provided a forum for young investigators.

Eligibility

Members of the SMBE who are either current graduate students or postdoctoral researchers and who received the primary doctoral-level degree no earlier than one year before the first day of the month of an annual meeting are eligible for the Fitch Prize awarded at that meeting.

Memberships with or without a subscription to the Journal are available (see www.mbe.oupjournals.org).

Competition

On the basis of abstracts submitted to the Chair of the Fitch Prize committee, the committee selects about 10 individuals to enter the competition. Contestants may receive partial travel support from the Society.


Award History

Year Name Title
2008 Jean-Francxois Gout
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
Translational control of intron splicing in eukaryotes.
2007 David Des Marais
Duke University, USA
Gene duplication allows substrate specialization in a biosynthetic enzyme.
2006 Jennifer Cork
North Carolina State University, USA
Characterizing three candidate balanced polymorphisms in Arabidopsis thaliana: a reverse genetics approach.
Joanna Kelley
University of Washington, USA
Positive selection in primate tooth enamelin and evidence for human population specific adaptation.
2005 Leslie Collins
Massey University, NZ
Cutting it in the RNA World: The Spliceosome and Splicing in Ancestral Eukaryotes.
2004 Barbary Engelhardt
University of California at Berkeley, USA
Protein Function Prediction Using a Bayesian Model of Molecular Function Evolution.
2003 Yoav Gilad
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
Loss of olfactory receptor genes is coupled to the acquisition of full trichromatic color vision.
2002 Ying Chen
University of Munich, Germany
Functional analysis of phylogenetically conserved sequence elements in intron 1 of the Drosophila melanogaster Adh gene.
2001 Jeffrey Townsend
Harvard University, USA
Global gene expression variation in natural isolates of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
2000 Eric A. Gaucher
University of Florida, USA
Functional analysis of proteins using covarion-based evolutionary approaches: Elongation factors.
1999 Dennis Lavrov
University of Michigan, USA
Arthropod phylogeny based on gene arrangement and other characters from mitochondrial DNA.
1998 Mark Siegal
Harvard University, USA
Functional evolutionary analysis of genes coplaced into the Drosophila genome.
1997 Christiane Biermann
State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA
Sequence variation in the sea urchin sperm protein BINDIN is generated by recombination and length mutations.
Paul Taylor
University of Leicester, UK
Diversity and mutational analyses of the Y-specific mini-satellite, MSY1.
1996 Dmitri A. Petrov
Harvard University, USA
Birth and death of processed pseudogenes in Drosophila: Molecular evolution of a non-LTR retrotransposable element.
1995 Hiroki Oota
University of Tokyo, Japan
Phylogenetic analysis of 2,000 year old human remains of Japan (Yayoi period) based on mitochondrial DNA sequences.
1994 Alan Cooper
Smithsonian Institution, USA
Avian evolution in New Zealand as revealed by mitochondrial DNA.
1993 Youn-Ho Lee
University of California at San Diego, USA
The divergence of species-specific abalone sperm lysin is promoted by positive Darwinian selection: Implications regarding speciation.
The Walter M. Fitch Prize honors the best presentation in this symposium.

2006 Walter M. Fitch Prize & Poster Competition Results