This Virtual Networking Event will provide a forum for the discussion of the development of infectious disease therapeutics based on biophysical analysis of microbial targets and the interaction of peptides, lipids, glycans and small molecules with these targets. Topics will also include unconventional approaches, including bacteriophages and nanotechnology.

Magnetic Resonances are highly developed, non-invasive techniques that can be used to study soft and hard matter at the atomic and molecular scale. Therefore, MR plays a central role in modern biophysics. With this event, we aim at advertising MR to the audience of biophysicists from different areas of expertise, giving clear-cut examples of what MR can do on its own and in integration with other biophysical techniques, and demonstrating that it can be easily approached and handy! The meeting will be highly interactive, with ample time for discussion and networking.

Networking event focused on the membrane transport proteins, with a particular focus on presentation opportunities for senior graduate students and postdocs. Such an event may be especially helpful to young scientists whose careers face unique challenges in the current pandemic environment.

Ion channels have well described roles in excitable cells. They are also known to be expressed in non-excitable cells but their functional contributions are generally poorly characterized. Although hundreds of ion channels have been described, there remain ‘new’ ion channels to be discovered. The goal of this virtual event is to highlight recent findings that help us to better understand ion channel diversity.

Understanding the physics of active networks such as the cytoskeleton of cells is of central interest to decipher the principle mechanisms enabling the complex, versatile and adaptive behavior of living cells. Interestingly, this complexity is achieved by a relatively small set of proteins which has allowed scientists to develop minimal systems recapitulating various cellular phenomena. Despite the advances of the last decade, particularly in networks based on a single cytoskeletal component (actin, microtubules or intermediate filaments), obtaining an understanding of multi-component active networks that links microscopic protein-protein interactions to the meso-scale network behavior is still a challenging problem. This network meeting intends to bring together experimental and theoretical experts and early career scientists from across the globe to present recent findings and discuss how to address key challenges to advance the field. The aim would be to identify key problems on the theoretical, modelling, and experimental side and to discuss what kind of information would be critical to make major advances.

Curvature properties have dominated our thinking about shape and biological membranes. Recently we have shown that membrane morphology - independent of curvature strain can modulate biological function.