What are the next ITC topics?

The International Titisee Conferences are organized two years in advance. Here you will find topics, chairs, dates, and if already available, lists of confirmed speakers for the upcoming International Titisee Conferences. 

Chaired by Frank Jülicher (Dresden, Germany) and Marcos Gonzales-Gaitan (Geneva, Switzerland)

A fundamental question in biology is to understand the principles and mechanisms that underlie the spatial organization of cells and living organisms and the dynamic processes by which such spatial organization is generated and maintained. Cells have to organize many cellular functions and complex chemistry in space. They are organized in organelles and further distinct compart­ments and exhibit a distinct spatial organization. On larger scales, cells form tissues with specific shapes and sizes by morphogenesis during development. All these spatial structures and morphologies arise in the context of dynamic processes and are part of the spatiotemporal organization of life.

This meeting will bring physicists, chemists, and biologists together to discuss the emergence of spatiotemporal organization and the role of information, energy, self-organization, phase transitions, active processes, and material properties in the organization of living matter.

Confirmed speakers

  • Armon, Shahaf (Rehovot, Israel)
  • Aumeier, Charlotte (Geneva, Switzerland)
  • Barkai, Naama (Rehovot, Israel)
  • Baum, Buzz (London, United Kingdom)
  • Bitbol, Anne-Florence (Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Brangwynne, Clifford P. (Princeton, NJ, USA)
  • Brugués, Jan (Dresden, Germany)
  • Campas, Otger (Santa Barbar, CA, USA)
  • Derivery, Emmanuel (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
  • Dogterom, Marileen (Delft, The Netherlands)
  • Goldstein, Raymond E. (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
  • Grill, Stephan (Dresden, Germany)
  • Hannezo, Edouard (Klosterneuburg, Austria)
  • Hariharan, Iswar (Berkeley, CA, USA)
  • Howard, Jonathon (New Haven, CT, USA)
  • Januschke, Jens (Dundee, United Kingdom)
  • Kicheva, Anna (Klosterneuburg, Austria)
  • Klosin, Adam (Dresden, Germany)
  • Krishnamurthy, Vijaykumar (Bengaluru, India)
  • Kruse, Karsten (Geneva, Switzerland)
  • Li, Jennifer (Tübingen, Germany)
  • Mani, Madhav (Evanston, IL, USA)
  • Manning, Lisa (Syracuse, NY, USA)
  • Mietke, Alexander (Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Milinkovitch, Michel C. (Geneva, Switzerland)
  • Nelson, David R. (Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Oates, Andrew C. (Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Piel, Matthieu (Paris, France)
  • Popovic, Marko (Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Prost, Jacques (Paris, France)
  • Rao, Madan (Bangalore, India)
  • Robson, Drew (Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Ronceray, Pierre (Princeton, NJ, USA)
  • Rosen, Michael K. (Dallas, TX, USA)
  • Rulands, Steffen (Dresden, Germany)
  • Sano, Masaki (Tokyo, Japan)
  • Saunders, Timothy (Singapore, Singapore)
  • Simons, Benjamin D. (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
  • St Johnston, Daniel (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
  • Viasnoff, Virgile (Singapore, Singapore)
  • Wyart, Matthieu (Lausanne, Switzerland)

Chaired by Tobias Erb (Marburg, Germany) and Marileen Dogterom (Delft, The Netherlands)

For centuries, biology has focused on understanding the fundamental principles of life through an analytical-descriptive approach. However, recent technological developments made it possible to approach life in a synthetic-constructive fashion. Within the last years, we have witnessed the successful extension of the genetic code, the design of novel proteins and cellular scaffolds, the reconstitution of functional cellular modules, as well as the realization of new-to-nature genetic and metabolic networks. Several international consortia have formed that aim at combining these individual elements of life to construct more complex systems that show life-like properties.  

At the dawn of this next revolution in life sciences, this meeting aims at bringing together biologists, chemists, physicists, as well as material- and nano-scientists, who focus on (re-)constructing life with synthetic efforts. Together, leading and upcoming scientists in this field of bottom-up synthetic biology will discuss current progress and challenges in the field and develop new collaborative efforts to further advance synthetic biology. We will address scientific, technical, ethical and societal challenges in bottom-up synthetic biology and develop a roadmap towards the ultimate goal of the field, the successful design and realization of synthetic cells.

Chaired by Karla Neugebauer (New Haven, CT, USA) and Christine Mayr (New York, NY, USA)

Cellular RNA molecules have exquisitely controlled sequences as well as secondary and tertiary structures. Collectively, they interact with thousands of proteins and can generate higher order structures. They scaffold and target regulatory complexes, catalyze protein synthesis, and determine how nascent proteins assemble into complexes. The majority occupy different subcellular compartments. In spite of their known diversity and functionality, biology continues to place proteins in the driver’s seat. For example, it is thought that proteins bring RNA cargoes to distant corners of the cell when, in fact, some proteins do not even localize to those corners without binding RNA. Also, RNA may drive the properties of local environments necessary for proper protein function. Are biologists overlooking RNA as a major driver for cellular orga­nization and function? The notion that life began in an RNA World implies this. We need to think more creatively about what RNA can and does do for cells, tissues and organisms.

This meeting will address the fundamentals of RNA in cells: the sequences, shapes, activities, concentrations, dynamics, localization patterns, and interaction partners. Participants will be drawn from a diverse community of researchers with knowledge of RNA biology in different kinds of cells and organisms. We will look at cutting-edge methods for analyzing RNA and the emerging data. We will envision new ways of thinking about RNA in cells and discuss what our field needs to elucidate the many roles of RNA in regulating cellular function.

Confirmed Speakers

  • Ahktar, Asifa (Freiburg, Germany)
  • Bevilacqua, Philip C. (University Park, PA, USA)
  • Böke, Elvan (Barcelona, Spain)
  • Brennecke, Julius F. (Vienna, Austria)
  • Buchan, Ross (Tuscon, AZ, USA)
  • Calabrese, J. Mauro (Chapel Hill, NC, USA)
  • Cech, Thomas R. (Boulder, CO, USA)
  • Cuylen-Häring, Sara (Heidelberg, Germany)
  • Ephrussi, Anne (Heidelberg, Germany)
  • Flynn, Ryan A. (Stanford, CA, USA)
  • Gilbert, Wendy (New Haven, CT, USA)
  • Gladfelter, Amy (Chapel Hill, CT, USA)
  • Görlich, Dirk (Göttingen, Germany)
  • Gueroui, Zoher (Paris, France)
  • Hirose, Tetsuro (Sapporo, Japan)
  • Jaffrey, Samie R. (New York, NY, USA)
  • Kudla, Grzegorz (Edinburgh, UK)
  • Landthaler, Markus (Berlin, Germany)
  • Lehmann, Ruth (New York, NY, USA)
  • Lemke, Edward (Mainz, Germany)
  • MacRae, Ian J. (La Jolla, CA, USA)
  • Mahamid, Julia (Heidelberg, Germany)
  • Miska, Eric (Cambridge, United Kingdom)
  • Narlikar, Geeta (San Francisco, CA, USA)
  • Nott, Timothy (Oxford, UK)
  • Parker, Roy (Boulder, CO, USA)
  • Pelkmans, Lucas (Zürich, Switzerland)
  • Polymenidou, Madgalini (Zürich, Switzerland)
  • Seydoux, Geraldine (Baltimore, MD, USA)
  • Shiber, Ayala (Haifa, Israel)
  • Tang, Tsing-Young Dora (Dresden, Germany)
  • Trcek, Tatjana (Baltimore, MD, USA)
  • Ule, Jerney (London, United Kingdom)
  • Vogel, Jörg (Würzburg, Germany)
  • Weil, Dominique (Paris, France)

Chaired by Leonid Mirny (Cambridge, MA, USA) and Job Dekker (Worcester, MA, USA)

Cells organize their genomes in three-dimensional space to facilitate and regulate a wide array of chromosomal functions ranging from gene regulation and DNA replication to chromosome condensation and segregation during cell division. During the last decade we have witnessed a revolution in our ability to measure the structural organization of chromosomes at increasing resolution and detailed views of the folded state of chromosomes can now be obtained even from single cells. These insights are now leading to new questions about the mechanisms and dynamics of chromosome folding, and the ways chromosome conformation relates to chromosome function.

Addressing these current questions requires highly interdisciplinary approaches at the interface of biology and physics. This includes development and application of experimental systems for structure–function analysis on the one hand, and physical modelling on the other to test and study the mechanisms of folding, the relation to gene regulation and other processes, and the molecular machines involved in these processes.

This inter-disciplinary meeting aims to bring together scientists who study chromosome folding and apply a wide range of approaches including cell biological studies, imaging-based measurements, genomics assays, computational analyses, polymer physics, and dynamic simulations of chromosome folding mechanisms.

Confirmed Speakers

  • Bienko, Magda (Solna, Sweden)
  • Brangwynne, Clifford P. (Princeton, NJ, USA)
  • Coulon, Antoine (Paris, France)
  • Dekker, Cees (Delft, The Netherlands)
  • Earnshaw, William C. (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
  • Gerlich, Daniel (Vienna, Austria)
  • Giorgetti, Luca (Basel, Switzerland)
  • Gregor, Thomas (Paris, France)
  • Grosberg, Alexander Y. (New York, NY, USA)
  • Heard, Edith (Heidelberg, Germany)
  • Hirano, Tatsuya (Wako, Saitama, Japan)
  • Jost, Daniel (Lyon, France)
  • Kaplan, Noam (Haifa, Israel)
  • Khrameeva, Ekaterina (Moscow, Russia)
  • Kleckner, Nancy (Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Marko, John (Evanston, IL, USA)
  • Marlow, Heather (Chicago, IL, USA)
  • McCord, Rachel Patton (Knoxville, TN, USA)
  • Peters, Jan-Michael (Vienna, Austria)
  • Rando, Oliver (Worchester, MA, USA)
  • Rosa, Angelo (Trieste, Italy)
  • Solovei, Irina (Martinsried, Germany)
  • Spitz, Francois (Chicago, IL, USA)
  • Tachibana, Kikue (Vienna, Austria)
  • Zhuang, Xiaowei (Cambridge, MA, USA)
  • Zidovska, Alexandra (New York, NY, USA)