The Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology has been held biannually since 1960s and is one of the longest running biophotonics meetings. The intent of the conference is to gather leading biophotonics investigators from academia, clinics/hospitals, national laboratories, and industry to present and to discuss their cutting edge research results. Through these scientific discussions, we hope to set new research directions for this field. A second goal of this conference is to create an intellectually challenging, open, and convivial environment to integrate young researchers into this exciting discipline.

Nine technical sessions are scheduled to provide a broad and comprehensive coverage of the biophotonics field while giving in depth examination of several rapidly developing focused areas. Four sessions providing general coverage are: Novel photonic technology development in the macroscopic area, Novel photonic technology development in the microscopic/nanoscopic area, Clinical diagnosis based on endogenous signals, and Clinical diagnosis based on novel exogenous probes. Four focused sessions are scheduled: Photodynamic therapy, Minimal invasive techniques, Tumor biology investigations based on invital animal imaging, and Image based bioinformatics. We further scheduled a technical session featuring scientific debates on two topical issues in the biophotics field; the participants of these debates are graduates students and postdoctoral fellows and they will be coached by faculty mentors. These debate sessions serve to actively engage junior researchers in scientific dialogs with the whole biophotonics community. In addition, two poster sessions are scheduled that further allow junior investigators to present and to discuss their own research findings.