Info: SBS is a 2-day early career – centric symposium held annually on a weekend in March or April. SBS is a safe space for graduate students, postdocs, and advanced undergraduate students to present research in the interdisciplinary fields of geobiology and biogeochemistry and share their work with faculty from colleges and universities throughout the southeast.

SBS attracts ~200 participants (students, postdocs, and faculty) from over 20 colleges, universities, and marine labs representing ~12 states in the southeast. SBS is organized by a local graduate student/postdoc committee with guidance and oversight from the faculty steering committee.

Format: SBS starts with an opening mixer on Friday evening and continues through Saturday and half of Sunday. After a keynote speech by a leading researcher in biogeochemistry, the symposium consists of three oral sessions (~25 talks by students and postdocs) organized and chaired by graduate students, a poster session, and an awards ceremony with cash prizes.

Goals: The mission of the Southeastern Biogeochemistry Symposium is to assemble early career scientists and faculty advisors each year for an informal weekend of scientific presentations, informal discussions, and social interactions with the goal of:

(1) advancing early career geobiology and biogeochemical research, education, and training within a comfortable, informal conference setting;

(2) building new, and strengthening existing, collaborations between research groups;

(3) establishing national recognition of the southeastern states as a center of excellence in geobiology and biogeochemical research.

History: SBS started in 2014. Past host institutions were Georgia Tech (Atlanta, 2014 & 2015), UTK (Knoxville, 2016), UGA (Athens, 2017), FSU (Tallahassee, 2018), and UofSC (Columbia, 2019). For more info on previous SBS, see this page.