The annual CDB Symposium was held at the RIKEN CDB from March 23 to 25, welcoming a total of 144 participants from 11 different countries. This year’s symposium was themed, ‘Time in Development,’ and the three-day program featured 32 talks and over 50 posters, and ample opportunities for active discussion on different contexts of time in relation to development.

Developmental processes of living organisms are marked by changes in form over time, and the topics covered at the symposium ranged from time-dependent cell fate decisions, molecular oscillations regulating morphogenesis, and developmental timing mechanisms controlling size and shape of organs and tissues to lifespans of different organisms and changes in developmental processes over the course of evolution.

The organizers of the 2015 CDB Symposium were Claudio Stern (University College London), and Shigeru Kuratani (Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory, RIKEN), Carina Hanashima (Laboratory for Neocortical Development, RIKEN CDB), and Takashi Nishimura (Laboratory for Growth Signaling, RIKEN CDB).

Next year’s symposium entitled, ‘Size in Development: Growth, Shape and Allometry,’ is scheduled to be held March 28 to 30, 2016.