Penrose Conference was held at Urumqi during September 4-10, 2011. This conference is organized by National Nature Science Foundation of China, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, CAS, and other interrelated organizations. The objective of conference is comparative evolution of past and present accretionary orogens: Central Asia and the Circum-Pacific.

The Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB, also known as Altaids) is one of the largest accretionary orogens on Earth and evolved over some 800 million years, from the latest Mesoproterozoic to the early Triassic. It contains a record of geodynamic processes during major Phanerozoic continental growth.

Following overview talks on the circum-Pacific orogens and components of the CAOB, key speakers addressed the issue of accretionary orogeny from the viewpoint of different expertise and methodologies. These were discussed, and shown on posters, with all participants during a three-day field trip across the Chinese Tianshan orogen in NW China and a subsequent three-day meeting in Urumqi. Emphasis was on process-oriented comparisons between ongoing orogeny in the circum-Pacific region and geological observations in the CAOB.