‘Hybrid’ scientific conferences aim to offer the best of in-person and virtual meetings May. 12, 2021 , 12:50 PM Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic upended the conference experience for researchers around the globe as scientific societies canceled in-person meetings and scrambled to hold virtual events in their place—with varying success. Now, as vaccines become more widely available, particularly in the United States, some of those societies are grappling with a new challenge: when and how to safely get conference attendees into the same room again while maintaining the accessibility and wide reach virtual meetings afford. Many are opting to stay virtual. But this summer and fall, a handful of U.S. societies are taking the plunge and planning “hybrid” meetings, which will convene in a physical location and also allow for virtual participation. It's a significant undertaking, often involving two separate planning teams and greater expense—and the risk that virtual attendees won't get the full benefit of the meeting. But many are optimistic it will pay off. “We're going to take the best of both worlds and try and smash them together in a way that makes sense,” says Nate Wambold, director of meetings and conferences for the American Anthropological Association (AAA). (For its 2022 annual meeting, AAAS,