Symposia cover broad topics in biophysics with presentations by leading experts in their field. All symposia speakers are invited to speak by the Program Committee. Symposia are held Sunday - Wednesday.
Sunday, February 22, 2026
8:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Genome Biophysics: Linking Structure, Function and Disease
Lu Gan, University of Virginia, USA, Chair
Kelly Thayer, Wesleyan University, USA
Sergei Grigoryev, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Tamar Schlick, New York University, USA
Ziqing Winston Zhao, National University of Singapore, Singapore - Symp Select
Order from Chaos: The Biophysics of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
Tanja Mittag, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, USA, Chair
Magnus Kjærgaard, Aarhus University, Denmark
Benjamin Schuler, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Sigrid Milles, Leibniz - FMP, Germany 
Tatiana Morozova, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France - Symp Select
10:45 AM - 12:45 PM
Emergent Properties of Coupled Membranes and Condensates
Benjamin Machta, Yale University, USA, Chair
Dragomir Milovanovic, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Germany
Jonathon Nixon-Abell, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Christine Keating, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Ioulia Rouzina, Ohio State University, USA - Symp Select
Structural Evolution of Cellular Motility Machinery
Edward Egelman, University of Virginia, USA, Chair
Susan Lea, NCI, NIH, USA
Makoto Miyata, Osaka City University, Japan
Kent Hill, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Mert Gur, University of Pittsburgh, USA - Symp Select
Jeremy M. Berg, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Daniel Cohen, Princeton University, USA
Sean Decatur, American Museum of Natural History, USA
Holden Thorp, George Washington University, USA
Theanne Griffith, University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, USA
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Sixty Years After the Alternating Access Model: Emerging Mechanisms of Membrane Transport
Da-Neng Wang, New York University, USA, Chair
Lucy Forrest, NINDS, NIH, USA
Janice Robertson, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Simon Newstead, Oxford University, United Kingdom
Fabrizio Marinelli, Medical College of Wisconsin Biophysics, USA - Symp Select
Calcium Signaling: New Views on a Classic
Martin Falcke, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Germany, Chair
Ivo Siekmann, Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom
Shyam Krishnakumar, Yale University, USA
David Yule, University of Rochester, USA
Robyn Rebbeck, University of Minnesota, USA - Symp Select
Monday, February 23, 2026
8:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Keith Cassidy, University of Missouri, USA
Chiang Liu, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA
Giulio Tsei, Malmö University, Sweden
Megan Ken, Scripps Research Institute, USA
RNA Dynamics and Phase Transitions
Peixuan Guo, The Ohio State University, USA, Chair
Elisa Franco, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Sarah Woodson, Johns Hopkins University, USA
Andreas Walther, University of Mainz, Germany
Wilton Snead, Northwestern University, USA - Symp Select
10:45 AM - 12:45 PM
Novel Protein Machines
Cees Dekker, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, Chair
Leonid Mirny, MIT, USA
Stephan Gruber, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Eva-Maria Strauch, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Daniel Dickinson, University of Texas at Austin, USA - Symp Select
Membrane Contacts and Lipid Transfer Across and Between Membranes
Yongli Zhang, Yale University, USA, Chair
Andre Nadler, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Germany
Katsumori Segawa, Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan
Matthew Freeman, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, United Kingdom
Robert Vacha, Masaryk University, Czech Republic - Symp Select
The Ins-and-Outs of Mitochondrial Ions and Metabolites
Ming-Feng Tsai, University of Virginia, USA, Chair
Hongying Shen, Yale University, USA
Speaker to be Announced
Werner Kuehlbrandt, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Germany
Vanessa Leone, Medical College of Wisconsin, USA - Symp Select
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Catalysis Inside the Membrane Core
Anirban Banerjee, NICHD, NIH, USA, Chair
Stephen Blacklow, Harvard University, USA
Amy Rosenzweig, Northwestern University, USA
Raquel Lieberman, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
KV Lakshmi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA - Symp Select
Cell Mechanosensing and Mechanotransduction
Brenton Hoffman, Duke University, USA, Chair
Adam Engler, University of California, San Diego, USA
Jennifer Shin, KAIST, Korea
Rong Li, Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Dong-Hwee Kim, Korea University, Korea - Symp Select
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
8:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Alex Gorfe, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA
Heather Pinkett, Northwestern University, USA
Hawa Racine Thiam, Stanford University, USA
Blanton Tolbert, University of Pennsylvania, USA
The Biophysics of Active Matter
Guy Genin, Washington University in St. Louis, USA, Chair
Paul Janmey, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Alison Patteson, Syracuse University, USA
Pere Roca-Cusachs, IBEC Barcelona, Spain
Jing Xu, University of California, Merced, USA - Symp Select
10:45 AM - 12:45 PM
Memory in Molecular and Cellular Systems
Jennifer L. Ross, Syracuse University, USA, Chair
Michael Rust, University of Chicago, USA
Jennifer Schwarz, Syracuse University, USA
Michael Murrell, Yale University, USA
Wallace Marshall, University of California, San Francisco, USA - Symp Select
Evolution of Lipidomes and Membrane Phenotypes
James Saenz, Dresden University of Technology, Germany, Chair
Jochen Brocks, Australian National University, Australia
Jacob Winnikoff, Harvard, University, USA
Maria Makarova, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Rana Ashkar, Virginia Tech, USA - Symp Select
Biophysical Journal Symp
Min Lin, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Alexandra Olaya-Castro, University College London, United Kingdom
Jin Yu, University of California, Irvine, USA
Laurent J. Catoire, Universite Paris Cite, France
Luigi Catacuzzeno, University of Perugia, Italy
Denis V. Titov, University of California, Berkeley, USA
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Molecular Chaperones: Basic Mechanisms and Pathological Consequences
Silvia Cavagnero, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, Chair
Bernd Bukau, Heidelberg University, Germany
Edward O'Brien, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Karen Fleming, Johns Hopkins University, USA
Edward Avezov, University of Cambridge Clinical Neurosciences, United Kingdom - Symp Select
Biophysics of Immunity and Cancer Immunology
Meghan Morrissey, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, Chair
Daniel Fletcher, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Mohit Kumar Jolly, Indian Institute of Science, India
Marco Fritzsche, Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology NDORMS, United Kingdom
Caitlin Cornell, University of Washington, USA - Symp Select
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
8:15 AM - 10:15 AM
New and Notable
Speakers to be Announced
Biophysics of Neural Signaling
Stephanie Gantz, University of Iowa, USA, Chair
Bryan Roth, University of North Carolina, USA
Marta Filizola, Mount Sinai Hospital, USA
Mohammad-Reza Ghovanloo, Yale University, USA
Andreas Reiner , Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany - Symp Select
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Neural Mechanisms of Soft Tissue Manipulation and Mechanotherapy
Valeria Vasquez, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA, Chair
Victoria Abraira, Rutgers University, USA
Gregory Gerling, University of Virginia, USA
Karl Lewis, Cornell University, USA
Michael Grabe, University of California, San Francisco, USA - Symp Select
Nonlamellar Lipid Phases in Biology
Cecilia Leal, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, Chair
Christopher Lee, University of California, San Diego, USA
Alexander Sodt, NICHD, NIH, USA
Joachim Raedler, Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany
Joseph Lorent, UCLouvain Brussels Woluwe, Belgium - Symp Select