Theme, Background, Objectives, Topics

IFBC-2025 stands as a recurring small-scale conference focused on exciting new fields at the frontiers of Fungal Cell Biology and it is designed to provide a great environment to foster scientific and social interactions. It is expected that all participants attend every talk and therefore, concurrent sessions are not scheduled. Poster sessions are always very lively at these meetings and reach a similar audience as oral presentations. While IFBC traditionally focuses on "filamentous fungi biology", it also welcomes a select number of ‘yeast people’ as speakers or participants.

The IFBC-2025 conference will revolve around fundamental phenomena and underlying mechanisms in fungal cell biology, and how these are related to intracellular and intercellular interactions with the environment and fungal hosts. The final sessions will be determined based on the abstracts submitted.

For IFBC-2025, 30 speakers have already committed to participate (see Speakers), covering a balanced representation of established colleagues and those at earlier points in their career. Gender parity and geographical diversity were also key considerations in our selection process, all while maintaining a commitment to scientific excellence (e.g. ERC holders). Additionally, we plan to include 20-22 more speakers, which will be chosen from submitted abstracts. We expect to have 100 attendees, which is an ideal size for fostering meaningful discussions and facilitating networking opportunities.

We are also delighted to announce that Professors Claudio Scazzocchio and Anne Spang will deliver honorary plenary talks at the event.

The IFBC-2025 program includes sessions on:

• Fungal Development, Metabolism & Homeostasis
• Fungal Mechanisms
• Fungal Interactions with Hosts
• Fungal Societal Interactions and their effect on Microbiomes
• Fungal Virulence and evolution
• New Methodological Tools

Organizers

George Diallinas
Department of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
& IMBB-FORTH, Crete
Greece

Meritxell Riquelme
Department of Microbiology
Scientific Research Center and Higher Education of Ensenada
Baja California, Mexico

Committees

Scientific committee

George Diallinas (Principle Organizer)

Meritxell Riquelme (Chair of the IFBC policy committee)

Antonio di Pietro (member of the IFBC policy committee

Natalia Requena (member of the IFBC policy committee

Xiaorong Lin (member of the IFBC policy committee).

Local organization committee

George Diallinas

Georgia Maria Sagia

Xenia Georgiou

Sofia Politi

Sotiris Amillis