NOVEMBER 4-5, 2025

Price: $40 USD Members / $120 USD Non-Members.

Format: Online, for a total duration of 3-3.5 hours (30 min ISBER highlight followed by a 3 hour-workshop on Planning and Operational Setup). Attendees are expected to attend one or the other day, based on their location:

• Eastern Americas; EMEA: 9am EST start on Tuesday, November 4
• Western Americas; IPR; China: 8:30pm EST start on Wednesday, November 5
• Check your local time here.

NB: The workshop will be recorded and made available to watch on-demand to all registered attendees. 

Part 1 - ISBER highlight: ISBER Regional Ambassador (RA) Program

Have you wondered how to get more involved with ISBER, to share the biobanking strengths and news from your region?  ISBER has a volunteer program for you!  The primary role of an ISBER Regional Ambassador (RA) is to serve as a regional contact working in conjunction with the relevant Directors-At-Large (DAL) to better serve a particular area of the region.
The RA provides localized advice and feedback for biobanking information dissemination, local networking and educational opportunities and sharing ISBER tools within their regions.

Presented by: Regional Ambassadors

• BENEFITS
  Meet virtually your local Ambassadors representing your regions
  Learn about RA activities
  Learn how to apply to become an RA in the future

Part 2 - Planning and Operational Setup: Planning and Managing Storage Environments

• This Biobanking 101 training event is focused on operationalizing sections of the ISBER Best Practices for Repositories and will focus on biobank Storage and Equipment. The workshop will be taught from the perspective of high resource and low resource settings. 
  Equipment for storage
  Equipment management 
  Storage environments 
  
  What you will learn from the session:
  How to plan for storage (cryo and RT) and storage environments at your biobank, including considerations for number of units, space requirements.  
  How to monitor your storage equipment and storage space for optimum performance. 
  Preparing for cyclical replacement of equipment (business planning) 
  Considerations for the introduction of new technologies, including hardware and software (LIMS) 
  Considerations for backup plans and security systems (risk management) 
  

• Special Focus on LMIC Considerations:
  Storage planning and consideration (Cryo and RT)
  Back up plans – storage, electricity, security etc.
  

Presented by: Caroline Larson, Stella Somiari, Biobank, Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine at Windber (and additional Trainers will be added as confirmed).

Moderated by the Biobanking 101/201 Task Force - Debra Leiolani Garcia, Dee McGarvey, and Marianne Henderson