Last week, the Microbes and Social Equity working group hosted its first ever symposium! We hosted 15 talks over 5 days, with each session melding presentations and active discussion groups.

In total, the symposium had 254 participants (467 registrants) from 22 countries, and including researchers from various fields and career levels, as well as members of the Maine State Legislation, and members of the general public.  The breakout rooms resulted in 16 draft documents collaboratively written by meeting ideas, which highlight issues/barriers to social equity in research and practice, resources and policy ideas to resolve inequity, research questions yet to be answered, and ideas for curricula development and integrating research and policy into education.