The complex microbial communities that inhabit our world and our bodies play an important role in agriculture, environment, and human and animal health. The ability to analyze and control these communities critically depends on the development of new engineering and computational analytics tools. This one-day symposium will bring together microbiome scientists from the University of Maryland and neighboring institutions with the goal of sharing information about recent advances in the development of engineering and computational tools and their applications to addressing current challenges in microbiome sciences. The program will feature oral and poster presentations as well as break-out sessions aimed at addressing current challenges in microbiome sciences. Ample time will be provided throughout the day for social interactions, and the event will end with a reception to allow conversations to continue in an informal setting.

Key details

When: Friday, March 20, 2026. 8am-7pm
Where: The Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, 8125 Paint Branch Dr., College Park, MD 20742 (directions and parking information)

Registration information

Early registration deadline: February 27, 2026
Early registration fee: $50
Late registration fee: $75
Government rate: $25 (no food provided)

Registration link: coming soon

Limited complementary registrations available – please contact mpop@umd.edu for more details.

Call for papers

We welcome your contributions to our scientific program. When submitting your abstract, please indicate if you would like it considered for a lightning presentation (~10 min), poster session, or both. Abstracts are accepted in plain text and are limited to 2,500 characters in length

Abstract deadline: February 22, 2026
Author notification: February 25, 2026

Submission page: https://forms.gle/iAnmfoy4GefHTUTe8

Keynote speakers

Amy Willis, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, University of Washington

Ophelia Venturelli, Associate Professor of Bioengineering, Duke University

Agenda

TBD

Sponsorship

Sponsorship package

If you wish to sponsor this event, please contact Maria Johnson mjohns40@umd.edu.

Our next M3 meeting will take place on January 9, 2019, followed by a workshop on taxonomic annotation on January 10, 2019.  Both events will take place in Baltimore, MD on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University.  More details will be available here: https://blog.umd.edu/m3/upcoming-events/january-9-10-2019-m3-meeting-on-predictions-and-the-microbiome/

The inaugural M3 workshop and conference took place on November 1-2 in College Park, MD.

The workshop was sold out with over 60 people expressing interest.

The conference featured keynote presentations by Maria Giovanni (NIH/NIAID) and Julie Segré (NIH/NHGRI) and attracted over 80 participants from ~20 different institutions.

A report describing the event is available here: m3_workshop_november_2016