The Organizing Committee of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Society for Cryobiology (CRYO2009) is pleased to open this website to provide the conference information for all who are planning to participate or interested in CRYO2009 which will be held in Sapporo, Japan, on July 19 to 23, 2009. We cordially invite all of you to join the vital and fruitful discussion in all fields of cryobiology-related research.

CRYO2009 will be held at the Conference Hall on the campus of Hokkaido University, located in the center of Sapporo in Hokkaido, a northern island of Japan. We are proud to host the CRYO2009 meeting at Hokkaido University that has had a long history of pioneer works on cryobiology research. Hokkaido University was established as Sapporo Agricultural School in 1876 as the first college to offer bachelor's degrees in Japan. The University is also of renown for the "most beautiful college campus" in the nation.

CRYO2009 will be the third annual meetings of the Society for Cryobiology held in Japan but the first in Sapporo. The previous CRYO meetings in Japan were held in 1979 in Tokyo and 1994 in Kyoto.

We are still at preliminary planning stage of the conference and very much would like to ask your input and advice to make CRYO2009 enjoyable and fruitful. As the Society's homepage states (http://www.societyforcryobiology.org), annual scientific meetings are one of the two primary ways to fulfill the Society's objectives and dedicated to all aspects of low-temperature biology. This international meeting offers opportunities for presentation and discussion of the most up-to-date research in cryobiology as well as reviewing specific aspects through symposia and workshops. At CRYO2009, participants will be expected to bring the recent findings together and present up-to-the-minute views of active research programs in the cryobiology or related fields. CRYO2009 will include plenary (invited) lectures, keynote lectures, selected oral presentations and poster sessions. In addition, we offer several interesting social programs for everyone who come to join us in CRYO2009.