Plant and Microbe Engineering for Sustainability (N2)
May 2-5, 2027  | Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Daniel F Voytas, Ralph Bock and Jennifer Pett-Ridge
Scholarship Deadline: Jan. 6, 2027 | Abstract Deadline: Apr. 13, 2027 | Early Registration Deadline: Mar. 4, 2027
* Session Chair † Invited but not yet accepted | Program current as of August 26, 2026 1 AM | For the most up-to-date details, visit https://www.keystonesymposia.org
Sunday, May 2, 2027
4:00–8:00 PM Registration British/Columbia Foyer
6:00–8:00 PM Welcome Mixer British/Columbia Foyer
Monday, May 3, 2027
7:30–8:30 AM Breakfast British/Columbia Ballroom
8:30–8:40 AM Welcome Remarks Columbia Ballroom
8:40–9:30 AM Keynote Address Columbia Ballroom
  Sarah O’Connor, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology
Exploring and Exploiting Plant Specialized Metabolism
 
9:30–11:45 AM Programming Plants to Sense-and-Respond Columbia Ballroom
  Jenn Brophy, Stanford University
Synthetic Biology Tools for Engineering Plants for Stress Resilience
 
  Francesco Licausi, University of Oxford
Synthetic Signal Transduction for Enhanced Flooding Responses in Plants
 
  Markus Schwarzländer, University of Münster
Sensors and Controllers for and from Plants
 
  Short Talk(s) Chosen from Abstracts
 
10:00–10:20 AM Coffee Break British/Columbia Foyer
11:55–12:55 PM Panel Discussion: Transition of Emerging Technologies from the Laboratory to Real-World Agricultural Applications Columbia Ballroom
12:30–1:00 PM Poster Setup Vancouver Island Room
12:55–2:30 PM On Own for Lunch
1:00–10:00 PM Poster Viewing Vancouver Island Room
2:30–4:30 PM Symposia Spotlight 1 Columbia Ballroom
  Short Talks Chosen from Abstracts
 
4:30–5:00 PM Coffee Available British/Columbia Foyer
5:00–7:00 PM Engineering Microbial-Plant Interactions Columbia Ballroom
  Maria J. Harrison, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research
Mechanisms of Nutrient Exchange in Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Symbioses
 
  Jean-Michel Ane, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Understanding the Molecular Mechanisms of Plant-Microbe Symbioses to Promote Sustainable Agriculture and Bioenergy Production
 
  Uta Paszkowski, University of Cambridge
Molecular Mechanisms of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbioses
 
  Short Talk(s) Chosen from Abstracts
 
7:00–8:00 PM Social Hour with Dinner British/Columbia Ballroom
7:30–10:00 PM Poster Session 1 Vancouver Island Room
Tuesday, May 4, 2027
7:30–8:30 AM Breakfast British/Columbia Ballroom
8:00–8:30 AM Poster Setup Vancouver Island Room
8:15–5:00 PM Poster Viewing Vancouver Island Room
8:30–11:30 AM Engineering the Rhizosphere for Agricultural Sustainability Columbia Ballroom
  Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Soil Microbial Communities and Climate Change
 
  Christine Hawkes, North Carolina State University
Leveraging Ecology to Improve Agricultural Microbiome Engineering
 
  Travis Frey, Pivot Bio
Talk Title to be Announced
 
  Gozde S Demirer, Caltech
Nanobiotechnology Tools for Rhizosphere Bioengineering
 
  Short Talk(s) Chosen from Abstracts
 
9:30–9:50 AM Coffee Break British/Columbia Foyer
11:30–12:30 PM Lunch British/Columbia Ballroom
12:00–2:30 PM Poster Session 2 Vancouver Island Room
3:00–4:30 PM Career Roundtable (Joint) British Ballroom
4:30–5:00 PM Coffee Available British/Columbia Foyer
5:00–7:00 PM Advanced Insect Control and Biocontainment Columbia Ballroom
  Michael Smanski, University of Minnesota
Engineering Genetic Incompatibility for Pest Control and Biocontainment
 
  Jiang Zhang, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
RNAi Control of Pest Insects
 
  Valentino Gantz, Agragene Inc.
Talk Title to be Announced
 
  Short Talk(s) Chosen from Abstracts
 
7:00–8:00 PM On Own for Dinner
Wednesday, May 5, 2027
7:30–8:30 AM Breakfast British/Columbia Ballroom
8:30–11:30 AM Synthetic Microbial, Plant and Organellar Genomes Columbia Ballroom
  Ralph Bock, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology
Plastid Genome Engineering
 
  Patrick Cai, University of Manchester
Synthetic Eucaryotic Life
 
  Ian Ehrenreich, University of Southern California
The SynMoss Project: Rewriting the Physcomitrium Patens Genome
 
  Annie Saltarikos, Plastomics
Chloroplast Engineering: Creating Durable Next Generation Crop Trait Solutions
 
  Short Talk(s) Chosen from Abstracts
 
9:30–9:50 AM Coffee Break British/Columbia Foyer
11:30–2:30 PM On Own for Lunch
2:30–4:30 PM Symposia Spotlight 2 Columbia Ballroom
  Short Talks Chosen from Abstracts
 
4:30–5:00 PM Coffee Available British/Columbia Foyer
5:00–6:15 PM Plant Engineering for Enhanced Performance and Sustainability Columbia Ballroom
  Daniel F Voytas, University of Minnesota
Enabling Plant Gene Editing at Scale
 
  Caixia Gao, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Precision Genome Editing from Single Base Pairs to Entire Chromosomes
 
  Short Talk(s) Chosen from Abstracts
 
6:15–7:05 PM Closing Keynote Address Columbia Ballroom
  Wolfgang Busch, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Engineering Root Systems for Resilience and Carbon Sequestration
 
7:05–7:15 PM Meeting Wrap-Up: Outcomes and Future Directions (Organizers) Columbia Ballroom
7:15–8:15 PM Social Hour with Dinner British/Columbia Ballroom
8:00–11:00 PM Entertainment
8:00–11:00 PM Cash Bar
Thursday, May 6, 2027
12:00–11:59 PM Departure