PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This is a new application for the Cardiovascular Bioengineering 2021 (CVBE 2021) Symposium to be held on the campus of the University of Göttingen, Germany. This will be the 6th Anniversary of the Symposium. The uniqueness of the proposed CVBE symposium lies in its combination of top researchers in cardiovascular bioengineering with underrepresented trainees in the field. Trainees are graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the cardiovascular sciences and biomedical engineering. The symposium will provide a forum for trainees and junior investigators to present their work in the areas of gene editing, induced pluripotent stem cells, and cardiac stem cells in the context of heart failure as well general topics in cardiovascular bioengineering. This conference grew out of initiatives from the NHLBI progenitor cell biology consortium (PCBC) and brought together initially PCBC cardiovascular researchers and their trainees as well as invited speakers. In 2016, as the PCBC was replaced by NHLBI progenitor cell translation consortium (PCTC), the meeting grew to a public symposium to broadly engage both PCBC investigators as well as others in in cardiovascular bioengineering. Proceedings and position papers have emerged from the meeting over the years,1-5 and it is now recognized as a unique public and recurring scientific symposium of stem cell and cardiovascular bioengineering. The conference in the past 4 years has added translational topics as well as the “bread and butter” of this meeting, which is the convergences of stem cell biology bioengineering, molecular cardiovascular research, and fabrication of functional myocardium. The conference topics started with tissue engineering, iPS cells, cardiac development, and in the past 2 years has grown to include exosome, microRNAs, mitochondria, cardiac gene and cardiac cell therapy. The attendance of this conference has climbed and, in 2019, the symposium was held at the University of Sydney, Australia. There were nearly 200 attendees from Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Europe, and America. In past years, the conference was held in March. The conference was planned for 2020 at the University of Göttingen, but the meeting was cancelled due to COVID-19. Fortunately, we are able to reschedule the meeting for 2021. The planned agenda represents an ambitious, fast-paced meeting with multiple sessions over 2 days including the Keynote lecture. Young cardiovascular scientists will be highlighted through invited talks at each session. Organizers of this meeting are Drs. Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann (Göttingen), Jianyi (Jay) Zhang (UAB), Timothy Kamp (UW-Madison), Malte Tiburcy (Göttingen), Laura Zelarayan (Göttingen), Susanne Lutz (Göttingen), Norman Liaw (Göttingen), Patapia Zafeiriou (Göttingen), and Rabea Hinkel (Göttingen). The proposal request of $10,000 constitutes approximately 20% of the total meeting budget, and as we have done over the last several years, support f...