ICAR 2027 will feature~125-180 speakers in 27 community-proposed & organized mini-symposia & workshops sessions

~150 speakers from abstracts

27 session slots

Students & Postdocs also encouraged to submit

~150 speakers from abstracts 27 session slots Students & Postdocs also encouraged to submit

Submit your session proposal by 31 October, 2026
Submit your oral abstract by 10 March 2027 (submission opens January 2027)

Submit Your Topic to Organize a Session!
Deadline: 31 October 2026

Submit your proposal by 31 Oct 2026

Students & Postdocs are encouraged to submit proposals and can serve as the session chair.
We plan to reserve at least 25% of the slots for trainee organizers, assuming we receive a sufficient number of excellent applications

The community is invited to submit a session proposal for consideration at ICAR 2027. Our primary goal is to showcase cutting-edge & exciting plant biology research with a focus on (but not limited to) Arabidopsis.

There are ~27 slots available: 18 community-organized symposia (75 minute program) & 9 community-organized workshops (60 minute program)

  • Proposals will be reviewed & scored by at least 2 members of the ICAR organizing committee (with proposer information removed) then discussed by the committee to balance topics, proposer career stage, geographic distribution, and gender.

  • We may recommend overlapping proposals to merge into collaborative sessions.

  • To support trainees we will reserve at least 25% of the slots for student and/or postdoc organizers (assuming we receive a sufficient number of excellent applications)

ICAR 2027 will be a hybrid conference meaning that virtual attendees can view live-streamed & recorded sessions.

  • We will not have virtual speakers; all speakers must be on-site.

  • We will record sessions for later viewing by registered in-person & virtual attendees.

  • By submitting a session proposal you are agreeing that if your topic is selected, that your session will be accessible by virtual attendees and recorded for on-demand access by registered participants (for ~7 weeks). It will also be important to make this clear to any speakers that you recruit outside of submitted abstracts.

Proposals will include:

  1. Your contact information as session chair (optional, but encouraged, co-chair contact information)

  2. Session Title (your proposed title, which can be finalized in the future if you are offered a session)

  3. Session Description (150-300 words; be clear & give details to distinguish your session proposal from others)

  4. Names of 2-4 possible speakers. No formal invitations should be extended until your session is confirmed as selected in December. You may be one of the speakers.

Proposals are judged/ranked on a scale of 1-5:

  • Scientific Quality

  • Novelty

  • Interest to wide range of ICAR attendees

  • Balance of gender/career-stage/geographic and/or institutional diversity of submitters & possible speakers

Notes:

  1. We encourage collaborative session proposal development. When you submit your proposal you will be asked if you have co-chair information to submit (encouraged but not required; your proposal will not be at a disadvantage if you lack a co-chair)

  2. All session chairs are expected to select some session speakers from submitted abstracts. We plan to provide abstracts to selected session chairs in mid-March 2027 following the oral abstract deadline. We likely will need a few days to organize the submissions prior to giving them to chairs.

  3. A draft session program (with several alternate speakers) is due from session chairs by March 29, 2027. The organizers will review all programs for balance and diversity by institution, gender, geography, etc. [We may recommend inviting 1+ alternate speakers if the program is unbalanced.] Once your draft list is approved, you may invite the speakers.

  4. We will not approve sessions that are primarily composed of speakers from the same lab or the same institution.

  5. We do not have funding to offer to session chairs or speakers. Depending on fundraising success, we may be able to offer some registration fee waivers to students and postdocs that apply through a conference award application (tbd).

  6. All speakers must be in-person and all speakers, chairs, and organizers must be registered for ICAR 2027 by no later than 31 May 2027 to remain in the program.

  7. Selected session chairs will be required to attend a short (~30 minute) Zoom session in Spring, 2027 to go over session chairing best practices to ensure the sessions run effectively. At the end of each session will be time for chairs to ask questions.

  8. PLEASE REVIEW THE KEY DATES & INFORMATION IN THE IMAGE