We are pleased to announce the Cold Spring Harbor Asia conference on “Human Development - from embryos to stem cell models” which will be held in Awaji, Japan, located approximately 60 km west of Osaka city. The conference will begin in the evening of Monday November 1, 2021, and will conclude in the early afternoon of November 5, 2021.

There will be seven oral sessions and one poster session covering recent findings in research related to human development. About twenty oral presentations will be selected from submitted abstracts. Posters will be up for viewing and discussion throughout the conference. Social events will be organized to promote informal interactions among conference participants.

Conference Venue & Accommodation

Cold Spring Harbor Asia conferences in JAPAN are arranged in Awaji Yumebutai International Conference Center http://www.yumebutai.org/english/, Awaji is a beautiful, rural island situated in Japan’s Seto inland sea, connecting the Honshu and Shikoku islands. The Yumebutai International Conference Center was designed by architect Tadao Ando and is located in the northeastern part of the island.

Major Topics:
1. Human development from perspective of comparative embryology 
2. Pre- and peri-implantation stage human development
3. Primate models of human development
4. In vitro 3D reconstitution of human tissues and organs
5. In vitro 3D models of human diseases
6. Novel tools for in vitro reconstitution and analysis of human development

Keynote Speakers:
TBA 

Invited Speakers:

Martin Blum, University of Hohenheim

Grayson Camp, Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB)

Jianping Fu, University of Michigan

Shaorong Gao, Tongji University

Anne Grapin-Botton, the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG)

Weizhi Ji, Kunming University of Science and Technology

Karl Koehler, Harvard University

Madeline Lancaster, Cambridge University

Kyle Loh, Stanford University

Matthias Lutolf, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)

Naomi Moris, The Francis Crick Institute

Kathy  Niakan, The Francis Crick Institute

Ryuichi Nishinakamura, Kumamoto University

Olivier Pourquie, Harvard University

Nicolas Rivron, The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA)

Mitinori Saitou, Kyoto University

Eric Siggia, Rockefeller University

Mijo  Simunovic, Columbia University

Austin Smith, University of Exeter

Jason Spence, University of Michigan

Yasuhiro Takashima, Kyoto University

Takanori Takebe, University of Cincinnati

Aryeh Warmflash, Rice University

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, California Institute of Technology

We encourage abstracts to contain new and unpublished materials. The abstracts must be submitted electronically by the abstract deadline. Selection of material for oral and poster presentation will be made by the organizers. Status (fellow's talk/poster) of abstracts will be posted on our web site as soon as decisions have been made by the organizers. 

Fellowship: 
We are eager to have as many young people as possible attend since they are likely to benefit most from this meeting. A certain number of presentations by graduate students and postdocs in this conference will be selected as fellowship (USD $100-$500) awards. For more details, please visit Stipends

We look forward to seeing you in Awaji in November, 2021.