Submit a Proposal for a Guest Symposium at IMMUNOLOGY2026™

Please review the details on this page before submitting your proposal for a Guest Symposium at IMMUNOLOGY2026™. Proposals must be submitted on behalf of a professional society or NIH institute.

Guest Symposium Proposal Instructions

Guest Symposia proposals must be submitted on behalf of a professional society, NIH institute, etc. Sessions proposed by individuals will not be accepted. Guest organizations may not sponsor more than one session annually. All sessions will be 1.5 hours long.

The following information will be requested for submission: 

  • Main contact name of the Guest Society, Association, or Institution 
  • Session title and session description 
  • Proposed speakers, chairs, and alternative speakers.

Suggested Topics 

To encourage a broad scientific program, the Program Committee has selected key topics to serve as general jump-off points. Proposals for guest symposia addressing these topics or new ones not yet in the program will be prioritized. 

The suggested topics are: 

  • Human/translational immunology (examples include autoimmune disease, drug discovery, viral triggers of chronic disease, and xenotransplantation) 
  • Immunology-adjacent fields (examples include environmental immunology, fungal immunology, synthetic biology, epidemiology, and immunotoxicology) 
  • Systems/computational immunology (examples include cell population studies, AI in immunology, vaccinology) 
  • Specific cell types and their relation/function to immunology and disease (excludes traditional T cells) (examples include non-immune cells, unconventional roles of immune cells, NK cells) 
  • Tissue-specific and neuroimmunology (examples include neurodegeneration, immune responses in the airway epithelium, non-intestinal mucosa, eyes, reproductive tract, tissue resident memory cells) 
  • Innate immunity (examples include complement, innate and adaptive immunity cross-talk, neutrophils, trained immunity) 
  • Other (note: sessions focused on the topics listed above that are not currently in the scientific program will be prioritized).

Proposal Submission Timeline

Please note the timeline below is subject to change.

  1. Proposal submission site open (website location to be shared): October 14 – November 10, 2025 
  2. Notification of proposal decision and scheduling: week of December 10, 2025 

Additional Guidelines

  • All speakers and chairs must be physically present at IMMUNOLOGY2026™ in Boston, MA to participate. The meeting will take place from April 15 – 19, 2026. 
  • AAI does not reimburse Guest Symposia participants for registration fees or other expenses incurred by participating in this session. Individual societies and organizations may reimburse participants at their discretion. 
  • AAI will review proposed sessions, speakers, and chairs to avoid subject and participant overlap with other planned sessions, promote diversity within each symposium, and ensure that chairs and speakers differ from those scheduled to participate in IMMUNOLOGY2026™ and who participated in IMMUNOLOGY2025™. Please do not invite chairs and speakers until the session has been reviewed and approved by AAI.   
  • AAI advocates for gender and ethnic diversity by promoting equitable representation of men and women as speakers, and encourages international colleagues to feature scientists, including women, from the host country of the Guest Symposium. 
  • Each speaker must have a different institutional affiliation (e.g., the same university cannot be represented by two speakers). Both session chairs must have different affiliations. A chair and speaker may have the same affiliation if the chair is not also a speaker. 
  • At least one chair per session should have some experience with chairing sessions, and at least one chair per session should be at the assistant professor (or equivalent) career stage or more senior.  
  • Current AAI Council members and Program Committee members are not permitted to submit Guest Symposium proposals or chair a Guest Symposium.  
  • Individual institutes within large national organizations (e.g., NHLBI, NIH and NIA, NIH) are considered different affiliations. Exceptions may be made for organizations that have a more limited membership; please contact the AAI Meetings group (meetings@aai.org) for guidance.