You are invited to submit a full paper, long abstract, and short abstract to consider for review through the online submission system for Workshops available at (Submit a paper).

(1) Full paper: submit a full-length paper is an original work up to 8 pages (IEEE 2-column format). You can download the format instructions at (Access to the conference template).

(2) Short paper: 2-3 pages research or application use case.

(3) Abstract: 1 page to consider as poster, tutorial, or demo application.

Note: Electronic submissions in PDF are required. Selected participants will be asked to submit their revised papers in a format to be specified at the time of acceptance. 

Phil Stewart is a Regents Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Montana State University and a faculty member at the Center for Biofilm Engineering (CBE). He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1988. Prior to joining MSU, he was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris (1988–1989) and worked as a Senior Chemical Engineer at Bechtel Environmental in San Francisco (1990–1991). His research focuses on biofilms; specifically, control strategies for biofilms using antimicrobial agents, transport phenomena within biofilms, biofilm modeling, and detachment mechanisms. 

Stewart’s interdisciplinary background in engineering and biological systems makes him a key figure in translating fundamental biofilm science into practical control strategies. As part of the CBE, his work has implications for environmental systems, industrial processes, and medical applications where biofilms impact performance or health.

Title: Modeling Biofilm Chemistry, Physiology, Antimicrobial Tolerance, and Gene Expression

César de la Fuente is a Presidential Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads the Machine Biology Group. He is one of the youngest tenured professors in the history of Penn Medicine. He completed postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and earned a PhD from the University of British Columbia (UBC). His research goal is to use the power of machines to accelerate discoveries in biology and medicine. Notably, he pioneered the development of the first computer-designed antibiotic with efficacy in animal models, demonstrating the application of AI for antibiotic discovery and helping launch this emerging field. His lab is at the forefront of developing computational methods to mine the world’s biological information, leading to the identification of over a million new antimicrobial compounds. These efforts started by exploring the human proteome as a source of antibiotics for the first time. His team was also the first to find therapeutic molecules in extinct organisms, launching the field of molecular de-extinction. Molecular de-extinction has already yielded preclinical antibiotic candidates, such as neanderthalin, mammuthusin, and elephasin. Furthermore, de la Fuente’s lab has broadened its antibiotic discovery initiatives to explore other branches of the tree of life beyond eukaryotes. By computationally analyzing microbial dark matter, his group has identified nearly one million new antibiotic molecules. These molecules have been made freely available and open access to the scientific community to encourage researchers worldwide to synthesize, characterize, and further develop them. This collaborative effort leveraged machine learning to explore the vast diversity of the microbial world by analyzing 63,410 metagenomes and 87,920 microbial genomes. Additionally, through the computational exploration of thousands of human microbiomes, de la Fuente and collaborators discovered a myriad of new antimicrobial agents, including prevotellin-2 produced by the gut microbe Prevotella copri. Collectively, these efforts have dramatically accelerated antibiotic discovery, reducing the time required to identify preclinical candidates from years to just a few hours. Additional advances from his lab include reprogramming venoms into antimicrobials, developing autonomous nanorobots to treat infections, creating novel resistance-proof antimicrobial materials, and inventing rapid, low-cost diagnostic devices for COVID-19 and other infections. Prof. de la Fuente is an NIH MIRA investigator and has received recognition and research funding from numerous organizations. De la Fuente has received over 80 national and international awards. He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), becoming one of the youngest ever to be inducted. He was recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top innovators for “digitizing evolution to make better antibiotics.” He was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Langer Prize and as an ACS Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry, an ASM Distinguished Lecturer, Waksman Foundation Lecturer, and received the Miklós Bondanszky Award, AIChE’s 35 Under 35 Award, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Young Investigator Award, and the ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award. He also received the Thermo Fisher Award, as well as the EMBS Academic Early Career Achievement Award “For the pioneering development of novel antibiotics designed using principles from computation, engineering, and biology.” Recently, Prof. de la Fuente has been awarded the prestigious Princess of Girona Prize, the ASM Award for Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research, the ASM Award for Early Career Basic Research, the Rao Makineni Lectureship Award by the American Peptide Society, the Fleming Prize, and was selected as a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine. De la Fuente serves on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals and is currently an Associate Editor of Drug Resistance Updates (IF=24.3; the premier international drug resistance journal), Nature Communications Biology, Bioactive Materials (IF=18.9), Bioengineering & Translational Medicine, and Digital Discovery. He has been named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate multiple times. Prof. de la Fuente has given over 300 invited lectures, including numerous Keynote and Named Lectures, and has also spoken at TEDx. He has co-authored an influential book on machine learning for drug discovery, secured multiple patents, and published over 160 peer-reviewed papers in top-tier journals such as Cell, Science, Cell Host Microbe, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Communications, PNAS, ACS Nano, Nature Chemical Biology, and Advanced Materials.

Title: AI for Antibiotic Discovery

Dr. Sengor received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, Environmental Engineering Department in 1999 and 2002, respectively. She received her Ph.D. degree in Water Resources from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California-Davis in 2007. Following her graduation, she continued to work as a post-doctoral scholar at the same university until 2011. Later, she joined Southern Methodist University (SMU), Civil and Environmental Engineering Department as a Faculty. She has been a Fellow of the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity at SMU and has been actively working with the institute to address water quality issues faced by low-income communities. Since 2019 she has been a faculty member and Vice Chairperson in the Department of Environmental Engineering at METU. Her research expertise lies in modeling biocolloids, nanoparticle transport for heavy metal remediation, biogeochemical processes, and other applications in metabolic engineering and biofilm modeling. 

Title: Microbial Metabolic Modeling in Environmental Systems

Dr. Brent Peyton is a full Professor on the faculty of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, and the NSF Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University. His research focus is on extremophilic bioprocessing, in situ biocatalyzed heavy metal biotransformations, and growth of algae for biodiesel production in natural and engineered biological systems.

Before returning to MSU in 2005, Dr. Peyton was a tenured faculty member at Washington State University for 8 years. Prior to WSU, he was in the Bioprocessing/Bioremediation Research Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for 5 years.

He has authored and co-authored over 95 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and holds four patents in environmental biotechnology.

The Arkin laboratory for systems and synthetic biology seeks to uncover the evolutionary design principles of cellular networks and populations and to exploit them for applications. To do so they are developing a framework to effectively combine comparative functional genomics, quantitative measurement of cellular dynamics, biophysical modeling of cellular networks, and cellular circuit design to ultimately facilitate applications in health, the environment, and bioenergy. We lead three major projects: The Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies (ENIGMA) program which seek to advance a predictive, mechanistic understanding of microbial biology and the impact of microbial communities on their ecosystems; The DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) is a software and data science platform designed to meet the grand challenge of transparent, reusable, reproducible systems biology: predicting and designing biological function; and the Center for Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES) which aims to create a high efficiency sustainable and regenerable biomanufacturing platform for functional food, pharmaceuticals and materials for prolonged deep space missions. 

Dr. Matthew Fields is a professor in the Department of Microbiology & Cell Biology and also serves as Director of the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University.  Biofilms impact both applied and fundamental aspects of biology and engineering and require multi-disciplinary approaches in both research and education.  The Center for Biofilm Engineering (CBE) is a center of excellence for research, education, and outreach; where students work with faculty and researchers in an interdisciplinary environment addressing both fundamental and applied questions in biofilm science.  He also serves on BERAC for the U.S. Department of Energy to provide guidance on biological and environmental research important to the U.S. DOE. His laboratory uses molecular ecology and physiology to study microbial communities associated with different environments.   

Dr. Sen Subramanian is currently Professor and Graduate program coordinator in the Department of Agronomy, horticulture and plant science at South Dakota State University. 

His lab is interested in plant-microbe interactions in particular understanding hormone regulation during soybean root nodule development. Prior to his current position, he was a post-doctoral associate at the Danforth Plant Science center in St Louis MO working with Dr. Oliver Yu. He obtained his PhD degree from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology working with Dr. Chris Rock.

Dr. Stoodley's lab has shown that surgical site infection from bacterial biofilms is a major complication associated with all medical devices including orthopaedic implants, catheters, and sutures and meshes. Dr. Stoodley's lab has also shown that dental plaque biofilms are a leading cause of caries, gingivitis and periodontitis. Biofilms also grow on industrial surfaces such as ship hulls and pipelines, where they increase drag, cause corrosion and can contaminate product. If bacteria are allowed to contact with surfaces biofilms are extremely difficult to prevent and treat and remain a major healthcare and industrial challenge. The research goal of the Stoodley lab is to identify key processes involved in biofilm development and persistence on the lab bench and in clinical and industrial settings, with the applied aim of improved prevention, diagnostic and treatment strategies.