The Youth Summit has taken place for the last years at the Natural History Museum, over the last two years the summit concentrated on Climate Change issues.

The focus of this international event for 2008 will be on Darwin’s ideas and how they impact in the modern world.

Possible sessions during the summit include:

• anthropogenic change and biodiversity crisis/ millenium ecosystem assessment;
  
• epidemiology of diseases pandemics such as bird flu;
  
• evolutionary algorithms which are revolutionising design in the development everything from new pharmaceuticals to silicon chips;
  
• how evolution in computer networks -with mutating worms, viruses and trogons - is shaping the international information architecture.

This conference aims to reinforce the basic principals of evolution by way of natural selection – emphasizing how it is relevant to real application in the present day and is part of the 2009, 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”.

Dates:
The conference will take place on Wednesday 2nd July, Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th July. Therefore participants are expected to arrive in London on Tuesday 1st at the latest. The candidate from Chile should be available between the 29th of June and the 5th of July, to cover flight availability.

Accommodation and activities:
As happened in the previous summits, the participant will be staying at the Imperial College student accommodation. There will be evening activities/entertainment including a tour of London and a visit to the Royal Geographical Society and breakfast, lunch and evening meals will be provided.