24 April 2025

It has been one month since we celebrated our 100-year anniversary alongside our biological community at the Biologists @ 100 conference, hosted in ACC Liverpool, UK, on 24-27 March 2025. We have many special things planned for this momentous year and this community conference was a major event in our 2025 plans. We are delighted that the conference was so well attended and we received excellent feedback, which we are proud to share. A huge thank you to everyone who was able to join us for our conference, who contributed in ways both large and small, to making this event a success.

“I think every single delegate will be leaving full of energy, full of science and full of appreciation for The Company of Biologists.”

As the scopes of our journals span across diverse fields of biology, it was important for us to host a unique conference that brought together all our communities. The conference was organised with three societies: the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB), the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) and the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB), all which we have a long historical association with. Given that two of the societies are UK-focused, it’s no surprise that most attendees were from the UK, but altogether we hosted 585 attendees from 27 countries, representing 6 continents.

“Super meeting, well organised, highly inspirational, perfect number of participants.”

“I enjoyed seeing talks from BSDB, BSCB and SEB.”

On Monday, we kicked off the conference with a great first day featuring an SEB satellite meeting focused on ‘Experimental biology: solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss’, a career session for 130 early-career researchers, the kick-off for the main conference at which the audience applauded our new ‘About us’ video, the start of the JEB Symposium on ‘Sensory perception in a changing world’ and a welcome reception at The Museum of Liverpool, UK.

“I was particularly pleased that the meeting was suffused with discussions on different aspects of sustainability, and that the delegates were really engaged with that.”

On Tuesday, our focus on climate change continued with plenaries on biodiversity and climate change as well as a ‘silent theatre’ session on climate change. Furthermore, the second day of the conference also launched the cell and developmental biology sessions, which featured the BSDB Waddington medal talk amongst many great talks, and the first poster session.

“Wow, what a triumph that meeting was!”

“Talks from the Arctic to the Antarctic!”

 

“It was a great meeting: vibrant, diverse (scientifically as well as socially), collegial and engaging.”

“I enjoyed seeing so many women talk, from the scientists to the organisers to the editors of the journals. It was really inspiring!!”

Wednesday featured plenaries on health and disease, a one-day DMM strand on combatting antimicrobial resistance, a ‘silent theatre’ session on the future of scientific publishing and our second poster session. A science-filled day was followed by our gala dinner at the beautiful St George’s Hall, UK, and the compulsory disco feature at the annual BSCB and BSDB spring meetings.

“I very much appreciated the plenaries on broader topics, which were exceptional.”

“I especially enjoyed the broad plenary talks and the sessions were also exciting. So many great talks!”

The last day of the conference featured plenaries on emerging technologies, the final scientific sessions which included the BSCB Hooke, BSCB Postdoc and BSDB Beddington medal talks, and a panel discussion pulling lots of subject themes together while discussing the Sydney Brenner quote: “Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.” For the closing remarks, we were able to finish up with a video showing the highlights of the conference before the delegates headed home (almost all by train, in line with our sustainability aspirations).

“It was an awesome meeting … due to the fantastic plenaries that set the pace for the meeting, the parallel sessions, and the amazing panel discussion that followed.”

We had 76 speakers over the 4 days. Add to the mix 286 posters, an image competition, a sustainability zone, five Editor meetings, slido polls, delicious vegan and vegetarian food, author focus groups, ‘Have your say’ tables, 10 sponsors and 14 exhibitors, framed selfies, and an artist creating a mural live for us to bring back to our office in Cambridge.

 “What an incredible meeting! It was very inspiring and everyone was saying just how special it was.”

This is the first time we get to celebrate with all our communities simultaneously so thank you to all of our attendees and sponsors and thank you to our wider community members who were not able to be present – our readers, authors, peer reviewers, community site members – who have made it possible to inspire biology for the past 100 years.

If you want to stay up to date on our 100-year anniversary activities, sign up to our newsletter and follow us on social media. We look forward to celebrating with you.