Guidelines

Expectations

• Events will be named “SMBE Regional meeting in XXXX” where XXX is the name of the city and country.
• The SMBE Extended Regional Meetings will promote interdisciplinary research by providing financial support for up to 100% of the costs, up to $50,000 USD per meeting. This should include the cost of at least two plenary lectures per meeting (hotel and travel). Sponsorship raised by the organizers could support other invited or plenary speakers.
• The schedule should be organized over 3-4 days and planned to maximize opportunities for early-career investigators (PhD students and postdoctoral fellows) to present their work as posters and talks.
• There must be SMBE members among the co-organizers.
• The date of the meeting should not overlap with other large meetings from other societies.
• The number of participants is expected to be between 100 and 200, allowing events to be organized in low-cost settings, such as University Campuses, rather than convention centers.
• A detailed projected budget, including the expected number of participants, travel/food/lodging costs, and registration fees, must be submitted with the application. Please note that SMBE funds cannot be used for indirect costs or overhead costs.
• If there is a registration fee, a discount should be offered to SMBE members, to encourage SMBE membership.
• The SMBE President or a member from the SMBE council or an Editor-in-Chief is expected to attend the meeting to promote the SMBE and its journals. A keynote slot should be reserved for that purpose.
• Meetings must be standalone events, but SMBE will consider events that could be organized jointly with local scientific societies with similar interests. SMBE must remain the main sponsor of the meeting.
• We expect the proposals to promote diversity and gender equity in the organizing committee and in the selection of speakers and participants.
• Proposals should strive to be inclusive and outline strategies for hybrid/virtual meetings. All talks are minimally expected to be made available to the SMBE community as recordings or live broadcasts. More advanced hybrid options are encouraged if they can be afforded within the budget.
• Participants of the meetings who are SMBE members are eligible for the SMBE Caregiver Award (at least two participants per meeting).
• The organizers should estimate the carbon footprint of the event. In particular, data on how attendees plan to travel (airplane, train, car) and city of origin for travel should be gathered upon registration.
• Meeting organizers should host a website for the meeting that highlights the central theme as well as the program, including the speaker list. This website should stay active for at least 3 years after the meeting date. Symposium and lecture organizers should provide a link to be advertised on the SMBE webpage. The sponsorship of the SMBE must be mentioned in all pre-meeting publicity and in the meeting program.
• If the event does not occur as planned, the organizers will be asked to return funds to SMBE and submit a proposal again in the following call.
• The same guidelines as Global meetings should be followed regarding diversity and code of conduct.

Awards and travel reimbursement by the SMBE

• Faculty awards are awarded as usual every year; however the ceremony will be held in the following year, during the global meeting.
• Other awards of the SMBE are also maintained, but organized locally and celebrated at each local meeting: Graduate student excellence award (GSE, 2 awardees per meeting with oral presentation, 10 awards in total across the 5 meetings), Young investigator award (YI, 20 total, 4 per meeting), undergrad and mentoring award (15 total, 3 per meeting). The registration and gala diner costs should be waived for these awardees. The SMBE will reimburse their reasonable travel and hotel expenses (up to a maximum of $2,000) providing receipts after the conference.
• Council members, IDEA taskforce, staff, Editors of GBE and MBE are encouraged to travel to the meetings but their travel will not be reimbursed (unlike Global meetings). Travel will only be reimbursed for the SMBE member making the keynote presentation about the promotion of the Society (the President or the person replacing them).

How to submit a proposal

Proposals will be received and reviewed by two SMBE Council members, who will make a recommendation to the SMBE Council, whose decision is final. The SMBE Council may decide not to support any meetings in any particular year. The selection committee may contact the proposers for clarification during the review process, and a timely response will be required. An unsuccessful proposal can be resubmitted upon consultation with the selection committee (contacts provided below).

Post-meeting expectations:

• Organizers will be required to submit a copy of the final program and a brief (~2-page) summary of the workshop/symposium/meeting organization and financial aspects to the SMBE Council within three months of the event. The summary should be sent to the SMBE Business Office (smbe@am.kwglobal.com) and the final budget to the SMBE treasurer SMBE@gmail.com
• Organizers will be required to submit a brief scientific report on their meeting for publication on the SMBE website or, alternatively, in one of the SMBE journals after consultation with the Editors-in-Chief. A concise financial report outlining the use of funds is also expected but will not be published.
• Please note that 90% of the funds will be transferred to the organizers at the point of acceptance of the proposal (or as soon as needed thereafter), and the remaining 10% will be made available upon receiving the scientific and financial reports.
• Unused funds should be transferred back to SMBE within 3 months of the event.

PROPOSALS INSTRUCTIONS

Proposals should be made via the dedicated website portal and will be considered by the selection committee

Please include the information below in the proposal

• The name(s), gender, career stage, and full contact information for all organizer(s) and the name of the institution(s) involved.
• Universities/organizations providing additional financial support, if available, should also be listed. If additional funding is being simultaneously applied for, please state the status of that request as well. Please identify the organizers who are current SMBE members.
• Meeting summary (4 single-spaced pages max). Describe the scientific rationale for your proposed meeting. In doing so, be sure to clearly state (1) the importance and timeliness of the location of the meeting; (2) the anticipated short-term and long-term impacts of your meeting on the fields of molecular biology, genome biology, and evolution; (3) the extent and nature of student/postdoctoral fellow involvement in the organization and scientific content.
• Structure of the meeting. (1) the proposed structure of your meeting (e.g., lectures only, lectures, contributed talks, poster sessions, etc.); (2) an indicative list of proposed invited speakers including their gender, geographical origin and career stage;
• Financial summary. Please summarize your financial request, including estimated total budget, registration costs (if any), travel support for speakers / trainees, costs of the venue (if any), and details of non-SMBE funds to be used.

SMBE SATELLITE MEETINGS

These are small, topically focused meetings with fewer than 100 participants that are organized and held independent of the SMBE annual meeting. In the past five years, SMBE has supported multiple Satellite meetings on diverse topics, a sample of our most recent Satellite meetings include:

• SMBE Regional Symposium on Evolutionary Biochemistry of Insect Antimicrobial Peptides, Houston, Texas, 2025
• “Origin, Maintenance, and Evolution of Biological Noise”, Tuebingen, Germany 2025
• “Ancient DNA beyond allele frequencies”, Dublin, Ireland 2024
• “Pathogen Pangenome Evolution”, Japan 2024
• “Evolutionary and genomic consequences of drive”, Arolla, Switzerland 2023
• “De novo gene birth”, Texas, USA 2023
• “Molecular evolution in small populations”, Princeton University, USA 2023
• “Fungal pathogens”, Québec, Canada 2022
• “Molecular Biology and Evolution of Cancer”, Yale University, USA 2019
• “Towards an integrated concept of adaptation: uniting molecular population genetics and quantitative genetics” 2019
• “Molecular evolution and the cell”, Utah, USA 2018
• “Genome Evolution in Pathogen Transmission and Disease” 2018
• “Modern Methods for the study of ancient DNA”, Providence, USA 2018

SMBE INTERDISCIPLINARY AND REGIONAL MEETINGS

SMBE will promote interdisciplinary research and extend its actions worldwide by sponsoring (1) joint meetings with meetings of other societies; symposia or plenary lectures on molecular biology and evolution at meetings whose primary focus is not molecular evolution; (2) regional meetings outside the US/Canada, Europe, and Japan; (3) small regional meetings in the US/Canada, Europe, or Japan targeted towards PhD students and postdocs with the purpose of helping them develop their presentation skills and facilitate networking.

Most recent SMBE Regional and Interdisciplinary meetings were:

• “Experimental Evolution -past and future perspectives”, Chile, 2025
• “II Latin American Meeting of Evolution (II CLEVOL), Argentina, 2025
• “Brazilian Symposium on Evolutionary Biology”, Paraná, Brazil, 2024
• Conservation Genomics and Long-term Population Resilience, Belém, Brazil, 2024
• “Evolutionary Genomics and Bioinformatics”, Taiwan 2024
• “Mexico Population Genomics meeting”, Mexico, June 2023
• “Molecular evolution”, India, 2023
• “PopGeneChina”, China, 2022
• “The Role of the Genome in Biological Invasion”, New Zealand, 2022
• Regional Meeting South America, Uruguay, November 2022
• “Israeli Society of Evolutionary Biology inaugural meeting”, Israel, December 2019.
• “Evolutionary genomics at the human-environment interface", Malawi, September 2019 (regional)
• “Population Genomics of Mobile DNA”, USA, 2019 (interdisciplinary)
• “Regional workshop on Computational Biology”, Mexico, 2019
• “Satellite workshop on Genome Evolution in Pathogen Transmission and Disease”, Japan, 2018