Community Mini-Symposia
​and Workshops

We received 88 community-submitted proposals from across the globe. A review committee comprised of members of the organizing committee and members of the ICAR 2020 External Advisory Board reviewed all proposals, ensuring each proposal was scored at least twice. A separate competition was held for proposals led by students and postdocs to ensure that early-career scientists were selected to lead at least 25% of the community-led sessions.  
We applaud the scientific excellence and creativity of the plant science community, which was clearly evident in the array of diverse and exciting topics that the committee received! 

Community Program Timeline
Revised for 2021

• December 2020 Updates:
  • Community sessions are currently being reconfirmed to be held in the virtual setting.
    • We list sessions below from 2020; those confirmed for 2021-Virtual are marked confirmed. 
  • Abstract submission is expected to open in January 2021. Community Session chair(s) will be invited to select up to several abstracts for short talks in their sessions.
  • Additional session slots expected to be added to be led by colleagues in Asia)
• (Previous timeline for 2020: March - July 31 2019: Community Proposal Submissions Accepted. August - September 30 2019: Review committee reviews and ranks sessions. October 15 2019: Mini-symposium & Workshop slots offered to selected session leaders; acceptances confirmed; any sessions declined will be offered to another group. January 31 2020: Draft session program (invited speakers list) due to organizers (selections from submitted abstracts may be listed as tbd)
• March 2020 Update: Due to Covid- ICAR 2020 postponed to 2021; Previously submitted abstracts will need to be re-submitted in 2021. 

Click for session descriptions

Dec 2020: Community sessions are currently being reconfirmed to be held in the virtual setting. Those confirmed for 2021-Virtual are marked "confirmed".

Encoding Calcium Spikes, Waves, and Oscillations in Arabidopsis
Sheng Luan, UC Berkeley, USA. Speakers: Sheng Luan, UC Berkeley; Gabriele B. Monshausen, Penn State; confirmed 

Exploring Brassicaceae Diversity
Kathleen Greenham, University of Minnesota and Patrick Edger, Michigan State University, USA. Speakers: Marcus Koch, Center for Organismal Studies, Heidelberg; Jennifer Wisecaver; Purdue University; Mackenzie Mabry, University of Missouri; Ratan Chopra, University of Minnesota; Andrew Nelson, Boyce Thompson Institute; confirmed

Getting More Power From Your Flower: Multi-functional Flowers Improve Plant Fitness
Diarmuid O'Maoileidigh, University of Liverpool, UK; confirmed

How Do Plants Sense and Respond to Elevated Carbon Dioxide, Ozone, and Drought?
Maija Sierla, University of Helsinki, Finland and Julian Schroeder, University of California, San Diego, USA. Speakers: Julie Gray, University of Sheffield, Diana Santelia, ETH Zurich, Maija Sierla, University of Helsinki; confirmed 

Leveraging Natural Variation to Understand Immune Functions
Adam Steinbrenner, University of Washington, USA; confirmed

Molecules on the Move (MOM): Plant-microorganism Communication
Patricia Baldrich, Danforth Center and Ryan DelPercio, University of Missouri Columbia, USA; confirmed

NAASC-organized Session on Plant Hormones
Anna Stepanova, North Carolina State University, USA. Speakers: Anna Stepanova, NCSU; Elena Zemylanskaya, Novosibirsk University; Zhongchi Liu, University of Maryland; confirmed 

Plant Memory: Environmental Information Integration Within and Across Generations
Gabriela Auge, IIBBA-CONICET, Argentina. Speakers: Gabriela Auge; Christian Lampei, University of Münster; Mariano Alvarez, Duke University; Mayumi Iwasaki, University of Geneva; Leandro Quadrana, IBENS-CNRS; confirmed

RNA Modifications-mechanism and Biology
Xuemei Chen, University of California, Riverside, USA and Yiji Xia, Hong Kong Baptist University, China; confirmed

Stochasticity and Robustness in Plant Development
Adrienne Roeder and Batthula Vijaya Lakshmi Vadde, Cornell University, and  Jennifer Lachowiec, Montana State University, USA; Arezki Boudaoud, ENS- Lyon, France; and James Locke, Cambridge, UK. Speakers: Adrienne Roeder and Vijaya Vadde, Cornell University; Christian Fleck, ETH Zurich; Jennifer Lachowiec, Montana State University; Lilan Hong, Zhejiang University; Sandra Cortijo, CNRS; confirmed

The Arabidopsis Algorithm: Mathematical Modeling in Plant Biology
Kari Miller, Washington University in St. Louis, USA. Speakers: Kari Miller, Washington University in St. Louis; Charlie Anderson, The Pennsylvania State University; Rajib Saha, University of Nebraska - Lincoln; Mareike Jezek, University of Glasgow; Fei Du, Chinese Academy of Sciences; confirmed

The Role of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Plant Biology
Heather Meyer, Carnegie Institution at Stanford, USA and Cesar Cuevas-Velazquez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Speakers: Lucia Strader, Duke University; Alejandra Covarrubias, Instituto de Biotecnología-UNAM; Dmitri A. Nusinow, Danforth Plant Science Center; Pan Zhu, John Innes Centre; Doris Wagner, University of Pennsylvania; confirmed

Using Evolutionary Novelty to Understand General Principles of Plant Biology
Daniel Kliebenstein, University of California, Davis, USA; confirmed

When Development Meets Stress- Integration of Plant Growth and Defense
Cris Argueso, Colorado State University, USA. Speakers: Gregg Howe MSU; Jian Hua, Cornell; Cris Argueso, CSU; 1 speaker, tba; confirmed

Technological Innovations to Jumpstart Biological Discovery
Christine Queitsch, University of Washington and Roger Deal, Emory University, USA; confirmed

From Molecules to Organs: Quantitative Imaging in Plant Biology
Marisa Otegui, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA; Daniel Kierzkowski, University of Montreal, Canada, and Charlotte Kirchhelle, University of Oxford, UK. Speakers: Agata Burian (University of Silesia, Poland); Richard Vierstra (Washington University at St Louis, USA); confirmed 

Exploring the Single-cell Landscape of Arabidopsis
Travis Lee and Joseph Swift of the Salk Institute; Rachel Shahan, Duke University; Josh Cuperus and Christine Queitsch of the University of Washington-Seattle, USA; Speakers: Travis Lee, Joseph Swift of Salk Institute; Kenneth Birnbaum, NYU; Siobhan Brady, UC Davis; Michael Dorrity, University of Washington;  Rachel Shahan, Duke University; confirmed

Active Learning and CUREs in Undergraduate Plant Science Education
Brit Moss, Whitman College and Thelma Madzima, University of Washington- Bothell, USA. Speakers: Brit Moss, Whitman College or Thelma Madzima, University of Washington Bothell; James Burnette, University of California Riverside; Mentewab Ayalew, Spelman College; Alison Crowe, University of Washington; Michael Wolyniak, Hampden-Sydney College; confirmed

Feeling Stressed? Environmental Adaptation in Extremophyte Relatives of Arabidopsis
Maheshi Dassanayake, Louisiana State University, USA and Simon Barak, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Speakers: Maheshi Dassanayake, Louisiana State University; Elizabeth Weretilnyk, McMaster University, Canada; Simon Barak, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; confirmed

Translational Regulation of Gene Expression
Catharina Merchante, University of Málaga, Spain; Astrid Gadeyne, VIB-UGent, Belgium and Pamela A. Ribone, Sainsbury, University of Cambridge, UK; confirmed

Sensing the Cell Wall: Mechanical Signals and Downstream Responses
Lauri Vaahtera, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway and Nora Gigli Bisceglia, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Speakers: Marie-Theres Hauser, Boku University Vienna; Julia Santiago Cuellar, University of Lausanne; Masatsugu Toyota, Saitama University; Christina Franck, University of Zürich; confirmed

Metabolite-mediated Regulation of Plant Growth and Development
Hiroshi A. Maeda, UW-Madison; Jazz Dickinson, Duke University, USA. Speakers: Hiroshi Maeda; Dan Kliebenstein, UC Davis; Aleksandra Skiryz, MPI of Molecular Plant Physiology; Jazz Dickinson; Marcos de Oliveira, University of Wisconsin-Madison; to be confirmed

Impact and Application of Basic Research to Sustainable Agriculture Improvement
Huachun Larue and Xiaoyu Liu, Bayer Crop Science, USA; ​confirmed

Arabidopsis Transposable Element Biology
R. Keith Slotkin, Danforth Center, USA; ​Speakers: Keith Slotkin; Leandro Quadrana, Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Superieure; confirmed

Running a Research Group in the Next Generation. Jacqueline Monaghan, Queen's University and Heather McFarlane, University of Toronto, Canada; Speakers: Sonali Roy, Noble Foundation, USA; Siobhan Brady, UC Davis, USA; Elizabeth Haswell, Washington University in St Louis, USA. confirmed

The Cell Cycle in Plant Growth, Development and Stress Responses. John Larkin, Louisiana State University and Adrienne Roeder, Cornell University, USA; ​confirmed

Quantitative Development in the Digital World. Margaret Frank, Cornell University, and Sam Leiboff, University of California, Berkeley, USA. Speakers: Mao Li, Danforth Center, USA; Annis Richardson, University of Edinburgh, UK; Sam Leiboff, University of California, Berkeley; Tessa Birch-Smith, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. confirmed

​Taking an Equity Lens: Empowering Women in Computational Biology. Aleksandra Beric, Danforth Center, USA; ​confirmed

Utilizing Arabidopsis in the Classroom: Empowering Students and Your Research Program. Siobhan Braybrook, UCLA and Liza Conrad, Eckerd College, USA; ​confirmed

Social Media and Science Communication. Javier Brumos, North Carolina State University, USA and Eva Hellmann, Sainsbury at Cambridge University, UK. Speakers: Javier Brumos, Eva Hellmann;
Detlef Weigel, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany; Elizabeth Haswell, Washington University in St. Louis, USA; Mary Williams, Features Editor for The Plant Cell, ASPB; confirmed

Stress Granules in Plants as Novel Mechanism in Stress Signaling. Monika Chodasiewicz (Kosmacz), Max Plank Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Germany. Speakers: Monika Chodasiewicz (Kosmacz); Emilio Gutierrez Beltran, University of Sevilla; JC Jang, Ohio State University; confirmed

​Arabidopsis Informatics. Nicholas Provart, University of Toronto, Eva Huala and Tanya Berardini (TAIR); confirmed

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Click For Confirmed Invited Keynote and Plenary Speakers