Elon University hosts 122nd NC Academy of Science meeting in Alamance County

Decoding the genome, and what it could mean for aging, cancer and the future of food, brought North Carolina scientists to Elon University as the 122nd annual meeting of the North Carolina Academy of Science gathered in Alamance County.

The two-day meeting, held April 24-25, 2026, centered on the theme “Science Innovation: Making Interdisciplinary Connections.” Friday’s evening reception and poster session at Lakeside gave students and researchers a chance to display work side by side, while Saturday’s oral presentations moved to the Koury Business Center. The keynote speaker was Douglas Phanstiel, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who delivered a talk titled “Decoding and recoding the genome: Innovative approaches to the challenges of aging, cancer, and the future of food.”

For Elon, the meeting was more than a campus event. Michael Kingston, an Elon biology and environmental studies professor, served as chair of the local arrangements committee and helped host the gathering that the academy describes as a showcase for North Carolina’s scientific community. The academy also said its mission is to promote public appreciation of science, science education, scientific research and science’s role in public policy, a goal that fits a meeting built around poster talks, oral presentations and cross-disciplinary exchange.

The presence of teams from Winston-Salem State University, along with scientists, faculty and students from across the state, gave Alamance County a visible role in a research network that reaches well beyond campus. Sponsors for the 2026 meeting included Elon University, Labcorp, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, Siemens Mobility, NC State University and IBM, a lineup that underscored how closely academic science, industry and workforce development now overlap in North Carolina.

NCAS said registration for the meeting ran from January 30 through March 31, 2026, and the 122nd annual gathering continued a tradition that stretches back more than a century. For Alamance County, hosting that kind of conference put Elon on the map not just as a college town, but as a place where public health, biotechnology and policy conversations can start before they reach the broader state.