Poster Information

Poster Eligibility and Selectio​​​n Process

The symposium is an interdisciplinary meeting, so abstracts should be written for a general biotechnology audience. Do not reuse abstracts or write as you might for abstracts to be submitted to niche technical conferences or disciplinary society meetings.​

The abstract selection committee is drawn from the CSUBIOTECH Faculty Consensus Group. The committee uses a “blind” selection process to select abstracts for presentation. No author names, department addresses, or campus affiliations are visible to reviewers.

Poster Abstract Selection Crit​​eria

• Poster abstracts should include original data and results. Literature reviews are not eligible. The most competitive abstracts make it clear what the project goal was, what methods were used and what conclusions have been drawn from the data presented.
• Abstract evaluation is not based on how much work is presented; new groups across the CSU are welcome to apply. Groups, however, must make it clear what has been accomplished and how.
• Abstracts describing bioengineering design projects might include calculations underlying original designs, customer discovery interview data, use of computer, design studio, or prototype facilities to demonstrate proof of concept and overall feasibility of prototypes.
  
• CSUBIOTECH solicits both research and curricular/program development abstracts. Core facility, curricular or program development results and data may pertain, for example, to “user communities,” “lessons learned,” enrollments and learning assessments.
• Poster abstracts should be readable and present ideas clearly. Poster abstracts must be comprehensible and crafted to communicate research results and the larger scientific/technical question to a general biotechnology audience. Successful abstracts provide enough background so that nonexpert reviewers can understand the significance of the work and how it might add to what is already known. In addition, successful abstracts clearly convey what the authors are hoping to accomplish or clearly explain the specific aim(s) of the overall project. Avoid acronyms in poster titles and the use of undefined acronyms.
• Poster abstracts should have correct spelling and punctuation. CSUBIOTECH does not correct typos, formatting issues or misspellings before abstracts are reviewed or the abstracts are published on the internet.

The most common reason poster abstracts are not accepted? They didn’t include a sentence(s) that make(s) “clear what has been accomplished, what methods were used and what conclusions have been drawn from the data presented.” We understand that abstracts sometimes are recycled from other professional meetings or that investigators might present work at conferences where this is not a requirement for poster acceptance; however, you must rewrite your abstract to meet CSUBIOTECH selection criteria. For further insight on CSUBIOTECH’s competitive abstract selection process, please read this document.

Symposium Poster Abstract Submission Informa​tion

The symposium poster abstract submission deadline is Monday, September 16, 2024 (5 p.m. Pacific time).

• ​A CSU faculty-led group can submit up to six poster abstracts, but—
• CSUBIOTECH can only accept up to two poster abstracts from each faculty-led group. If posters are being submitted by the director of a special research program (e.g. MARC U-STAR, RISE, LSAMP, BUILD, CIRM, etc.), on behalf of multiple principal investigators (PIs), then the program director is allowed to submit abstracts for students in those other labs. Under such a circumstance, the maximum of 2 accepted abstracts still applied to each PI. You will have the opportunity to make this distinction on your abstract submission form.
• ​​​​​​Example 1: Dr. Kim is the director of the CIRM program on her campus (wrote the CIRM grant, runs the program, oversees 12 student trainees working in 12 R1 labs at neighboring institutions). The 12 R1 PIs are not eligible to submit abstracts to the CSUBIOTECH Symposium. Hence, Dr. Kim is allowed to submit those 12 abstracts of her CIRM students’ work (with the 12 PIs’ approvals) without it counting against her own lab’s 2 poster maximum if any are accepted.
  
• ​​​​​Example 2: Dr. Lopez is the director of the URISE program on his campus (wrote the URISE grant, runs the program, oversees the 10 student trainees working in 10 other labs on his campus). For various reasons, all 10 PIs are not submitting abstracts for their URISE students’ work, but Dr. Lopez still wants them to apply. So, with the approval of those 10 PIs, Dr. Lopez is allowed to submit abstracts for those 10 students without it counting against his own lab’s 2-poster maximum if any are accepted. The accepted abstracts will count against the other 10 PIs’ individual maxima of 2 if accepted, just as though each of those PI’s had submitted them themselves.
  
• ​​​​​Example 3: Dr. Green is not the director of the URISE program on their campus, but has a URISE scholar in their lab. Dr. Green would like the URISE scholar to submit an abstract, along with two other students. Dr. Green submits 3 abstracts. All of them score well during peer review but the URISE scholar’s abstract ranks lowest of the 3. In this case the URISE scholar’s abstract would not be accepted, because it wasn’t in the top 2 (regardless of the fact that the URISE student is in a special program). Even if Dr. Green had asked the URISE director to submit on behalf of the URISE program, the abstract would still not have been accepted because the URISE scholar’s abstract counts against Dr. Green’s 2-poster maximum and was not in the top 2.
  
• CSU faculty members can designate a maximum of two (2) poster-presenting authors per poster.
• To be eligible for selection and presentations in January, poster abstracts must include at least one CSU author.
• Eden and Nagel Award nominations are submitted through their own applications systems. 

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• Click here to read the Eden Award RFA​​.​​
  
  ​Click here Sub​mit an Eden A​ward Nomination​​​​​
  
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• Click here to read the Nagel Award RFA.
  
  Click here Sub​mit a Nagel Award Nomination​​​​
  
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​Abstract Submissio​​n Guidelines

• Poster titles should be descriptive (150-character limit) and​ not include acronyms.
• ​Abstracts are limited to 2,500 characters.
• Abstracts must be submitted by student faculty mentors. Submissions by student authors may be rejected. Students having difficulty reaching their mentors to submit their abstract should contact the CSUBIOTECH program office at [email protected] before the submission deadline.
• The submission system accepts text only. Please note that formatting code will not work in titles and abstracts. Any formatting copied from word processors, such as Microsoft Word (e.g. bold, italic, underline and some symbols), will be lost.
• Spaces count toward the character limits.
• Abstracts should include funding agency support (including CSUBIOTECH) and other acknowledgments.
• Provide up to three keywords (for example: species name, field of research, technique) to help participants search for poster topics.