Developing the capability to design, engineer and produce complex, multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS) to emulate natural processes (development, regeneration, and disease) or to create new functionality is a grand challenge facing the scientific community. The manufacturing and design of these complex multicellular machines and systems (e.g., organ-on-chip models, biological robots, and organoids) require fundamental understanding of interactions between cells and their environment, their control by biochemical and mechanical cues, and coordinated behavior of functional cell clusters through computational and experimental methods. Cell interactions, controls across scales (from subcellular structures to multi-cellular systems) and behaviors will be central themes of the conference. The primary aim of this conference is to bring together a multidisciplinary group of forward-looking researchers seeking to explore these complex biological interactions and the emergent behaviors they produce, with the goal of creating responsibly engineered multi-cellular systems with specific functions.