About CSHL Meetings & Courses

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, not-for-profit research and education institution at the forefront of molecular biology and genetics. During the months of March through December, CSHL functions as an advanced postgraduate center for research training through activities run by the Meetings & Courses Program.

Since 1945, annual short courses at CSHL have trained the rising stars in biological and biomedical research. Practicing scientists, from graduate students and research technicians to tenured independent investigators, often must learn new techniques, paradigms, or even entire subfields as part of their continuing research programs. And to learn these techniques, they turn to the short-course program at CSHL. Nearly 1,500 scientists visit CSHL each calendar year as participants in one of the thirty courses and workshops currently offered.

Complementing the short course program are more than thirty professional meetings and conferences held each year at CSHL in disciplines ranging from Glia to Retroviruses. Professional meetings are an integral part of a scientist's career: they are a primary means by which scientists stay current on the latest results and progress in their particular fields. Each year, more than 8,500 scientists from over 50 countries attend one or more CSHL meetings. The flagship meeting is the prestigious Symposium on Quantitative Biology, held each June since 1933.