Welcome to the 2026 Southern California Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student Research Symposium, organized by graduate students for graduate students. Our goal is to bring together the graduate research community from institutions throughout Southern California, providing a forum to share, discuss, and celebrate graduate student research. The symposium is open to both PhD and Master’s students for registration and presentation.

We invite all participants to submit an abstract of no more than 2,500 characters as part of registration. The symposium highlights both basic and translational biomedical research. Attendees are encouraged to present a poster of their work, and selected abstracts will be chosen for oral presentations. Awards will be given for outstanding posters and talks.

This year, we are honored to welcome our keynote speaker, Dr. Ester J. Kwon, PhD, associate professor of Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego. Dr. Kwon earned her B.S. in Bioengineering and B.A. in Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Washington with Suzie H. Pun and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Sangeeta N. Bhatia. Her group in the Bioengineering Department at UCSD builds nanoscale tools, diagnostics, and treatments for diseases of the brain. We are privileged to have Dr. Kwon join us this year, and we invite you to attend his keynote address.

In recent years, participants from across California and beyond have joined our symposium, making it an exceptional opportunity to network with peers and engage with the rich biomedical research community of Southern California.

This symposium is hosted and presented by the Cedars-Sinai Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. We are committed to fostering inter-institutional collaborations throughout Southern California and beyond through programs such as this.

Thank you for your interest—we look forward to seeing you and your research at this year’s symposium.

– 2026 Symposium Committee

If you are interested in learning more about the Cedars-Sinai PhD in Biomedical Sciences program, please scan the QR code below.