Biologists @ 100: a one-of-a-kind conference

Development’s not-for-profit publisher, The Company of Biologists, was founded 99 years ago and has been inspiring biology and supporting biologists ever since. Thus, 2025 marks the Company’s 100th birthday, and we’ve planned various activities to help mark this extraordinary milestone in the Company’s history.

One of the major events is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration: the Biologists @ 100 conference. In addition to my role as a Senior Editor at Development, I’ve been ‘moonlighting’ as the Project Coordinator for The Company of Biologists’ 100-year anniversary plans, and so, with great privilege, I’d like to invite you to attend and explain a little more of what lies ahead.

Taking place 24-27 March 2025 at the Arena and Convention Centre (ACC) in Liverpool, Biologists @ 100 will be the first (and only) conference to bring together all the fields and communities covered by the five journals published by The Company of Biologists: Development, Journal of Cell Science (JCS), Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB), Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) and Biology Open (BiO); as well as the three community sites: the Node, preLights and FocalPlane.

Encompassing the annual meetings of the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) and the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB), you can expect everything you’d find at a traditional joint society Spring meeting, including award lectures and invited talks across the spectrum of cell and developmental biology. In addition, there will be strands related to disease biology and comparative physiology. We also hope that by bringing everyone together, you’ll be inspired to venture beyond the familiar and learn something new; perhaps you’re intrigued to learn more about one of the biggest threats to modern healthcare, antimicrobial resistance, or how animals sense and respond to the changing world. Connection, community and collaboration are at the heart of The Company of Biologists, and we strive to embody this at Biologists @ 100.

Organised by leading biologists, the sessions are also inter-disciplinary, with the plenaries tackling some of the biggest questions in biology today, such as climate change and biodiversity, featuring Hans-Otto Pörtner (Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany) and Dame Jane Francis (British Antarctic Survey, UK) – a timely topic indeed, as illustrated by Development’s latest Special Issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. The second plenary challenges how biology can help health and tackle disease with Sadaf Farooqi (University of Cambridge, UK) and Charles Swanton (The Francis Crick Institute, UK). Finally, we look to the future with a plenary session on emerging technologies including Manu Prakash (Stanford University, USA) and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz (HHMI Janelia, USA). Take a look at the preliminary programme for more information on the themes for the parallel sessions, with plenty of space for selected abstracts.

We hope you will join us in this celebration of not only The Company of Biologists but also of biology, which ultimately drives what we do at the Company and inspires the careers of our fellow biologists who are dedicated to understanding it. Registration is now open, and abstracts can be submitted until 13 December this year.

Finally, although Biologists @ 100 should be a key date in your calendar, there will be other 100-year anniversary plans revealed throughout 2025, including content in the journals and our community sites. Periodically visit our 100th birthday page on the website (where you can also sign-up for the mailing list), follow The Company of Biologists on social media (X, Mastodon, LinkedIn) and keep an eye on the #biologists100 hashtag to join our journey.

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