Welcome to the 20^th IUPAB Congress, 45^th Annual SBBf Meeting, and 50^th Annual SBBq Meeting

The 20th Congress of the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) was held online on October 4th- 8th, 2021, together with the 50th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SBBq) and the 45th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Biophysics Society (SBBf).

The IUPAB/SBBf/SBBq 2021 Congress, which brought together biophysicists and biochemists from various countries, showed the quality and international recognition of the research carried out in Brazil and provided a forum for the engagement and mobilization of scientists. The program featured 10 keynote speakers, including Richard Henderson and Michael Levitt, 2017 and 2013 Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry, respectively, and 24 symposia covering a wide spectrum of research topics. It was a stimulus for young people to pursue an academic career, as 43% of the more than one thousand participants were graduate students. Among the participants, 870 were from the Americas, 44 from Asia, 71 from Europe, 21 from Africa, and 3 from Oceania. Women were the majority, 541 participants against 468 men. A virtual fair was held in paralell to the scientific meeting, the ExpoSBBq, an exhibition hall for companies and sponsors that received around 400 visitors. 

The meeting's virtual format due to the Covid-19 pandemic was a novelty and the result was beyond expectations. In the online mode we lost the closest contact of in person meetings, but we gained in scope, being the ample geographic distribution of the participants a positive fact. The meeting platform worked very well, considering the number of people accessing the sessions at the same time. In addition, the recorded talks produced during the congress will remain available online open for later view on YouTube.

The congress also consolidated the long standing interaction between the Brazilian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SBBq) and the Brazilian Biophysics Society (SBBf), which have an overlapping of themes and researchers in different areas.

Young scientists

PhD student Carolina Manganeli Polonio, from the Laboratory of Neuroimmune Interactions, Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB) - USP, was the winner of the 24th Young Talent Award in Life Sciences, with the work Evaluation of the microRNAs in the immunopathogenesis of microcephaly caused by ZIKV. Promoted by SBBq and Cytiva, the award result was announced on the last day of the congress. In addition to the cash prize, the winner won an air ticket to participate in an international congress.

Also, 33 posters out of a total of 538 presented during the congress were distinguished with Best Poster Awards. The poster sessions were a great success, with over 18,000 views. The Royal Society Chemistry awarded works in the Medicinal Chemistry, Biomolecular Chemistry, Chemical Biology, Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry Frontiers categories. We also have an awarded in Molecular Biology from Fundape-SBBq.

The congress activities aimed at young scientists began in May, with The Young Scientist Webinars Series, coordinated by professors Eneida de Paula, from Unicamp, and Eduardo Reis, from USP. There were 10 webinars, with 150 to 300 participants per session, with lectures by senior scientists, post-docs, and doctoral students from 14 countries.

The IUPAB/SBBf/SBBq 2021 congress also hosted the XIII Congress of the Brazilian Society of Nuclear Biosciences (SBBN), chaired by physicist Silvia Maria Velasques de Oliveira. The IV Meeting of the South American Initiative in Molecular Simulations (SAIMS), coordinated by Professor Guilherme M Arantes, from USP, and the VI Annual Meeting of the Multicenter Graduate Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PMBqBM), coordinated by Professor Andréa Mara Macedo, from UFMG, were held as satellite events.

All the content of the Congress will be available soon.

Keynotes Speakers

Michael Levitt Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013		Richard Henderson Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017
Biophysical Society Lecture
©Nobel Media AB. Photos: A. Mahmoud
Ohara AUGUSTO University of São Paulo, Brazil	Carlos BUSTAMANTE University of Berkeley	Angela GRONENBORN University of Pittsburg, USA
Ramon LATORRE  University of Valparaiso, Chile	Yoav SHECHTMAN Nano-Bio Optics Lab, Technion Israel Institute of Technology	Giorgio TRINCHIERI Center for Cancer Research NCI, NIH
PABMB Lecture	IUPAB Lecture II
Anthony Watts Biochemistry Department University of Oxford	Tao Xu Institute of Biophysics Chinese Academy of Sciences
IUPAB Lecture I	Bei Shizhang Lecture