The meeting will be held at Boston University at the George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Ave, Boston.

The keynote address for BBM 2024 will be delivered by Dr. Joe Bondy-Denomy, UCSF. Joe Bondy-Denomy is an Associate Professor at UCSF. Dr. Bondy-Denomy earned his PhD from University of Toronto working in the lab of Alan Davidson. During this time, he studied the interactions between bacteriophages and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He became especially interested in the role of bacterial CRISPR/Cas systems in defending against phages and the strategies phages use to overcome CRISPR/Cas systems. Specifically, he found that phages encode anti-CRISPR proteins that block the activity of CRISPR/Cas systems. He started his lab at UCSF in 2015 as a Sandler Faculty Fellow with a focus on understanding the interplay between bacterial CRISPR/Cas systems and phage anti-CRISPRs. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2017 and Associate Professor in 2020.  His lab’s research has revealed fascinating insight into the interactions between bacteria and phages including discoveries of countless anti-CRISPR proteins, elucidation of the mechanisms through which CRISPR/Cas systems and anti-CRISPR proteins are regulated, and more recently investigation of novel mechanisms of phage defense and phage evasion. His lab has used understanding of CRISPR/Cas systems to improve methods for editing the genomes of bacteria and phages hoping that this will ultimately to support the development of phage therapies.

About BBM

BBM was founded in 1995 by two postdocs from Richard Losick’s lab at Harvard, Kit Pogliano and Karen McGovern, with the goal of bringing bacteriologists from the greater Boston area together to present their work and share ideas. BBM, now in its 30th year, has proven to be a vibrant meeting, attended not only by bacteriologists from the Boston area but from all over the country. Keeping with its roots, the conference is being planned and organized by a committee of students, postdocs, and other early career researchers. This year, the organizational committee is co-chaired by Molly Sargen, a graduate student in Sophie Helaine’s lab at Harvard Medical School, and Laurent Dubois, a graduate student in Tom Bernhardt’s lab at Harvard Medical School.