HomeVolume Fall 2005
Message from the Program Officer

Catherine Loudon

I. Program for 2006 SICB annual meeting in Orlando
II. Description of Program Planning meeting
III. Recognition of helpful individuals


I. Program for 2006 annual SICB meeting in Orlando

We have a very exciting program planned for our annual SICB meeting in Orlando in January 2006. There will be nine symposia, sixty-six contributed oral sessions, three afternoons of poster presentations, as well as special lectures, workshops, and socials. We continue to attract a large number of presentations (1053 submitted abstracts; even more than in San Diego), and there will be about a dozen simultaneous sessions in Orlando during the mornings and early afternoons. Scheduling the posters in the late afternoon without any other competing events has worked so well in recent meetings that we will continue this format in Orlando. All symposia, contributed talks and posters have been arranged into sessions, and will be posted on the SICB website for your perusal by early November. The grid will be posted earlier. Workshops and social events are still being scheduled, so check the grid for their times and locations.

Our meeting begins Wednesday, Jan. 4, with a plenary address from SICB Past-President John Wingfield, who will be speaking on "Control of reproduction in diverse habitats: multiple pathways for environmental signals." A society-wide welcome social for the Orlando meeting will be held that same evening following the plenary talk.

In addition to the plenary session, there will be three other special lectures at the Orlando meeting. On Thursday evening, the DCPB Bartholomew Awardee, Dr. James Gillooly, will present the Bartholomew Lecture on "Linking Biological Currencies in Ecology and Evolution." The following evening (Friday), Dr. Stacia Sower will give the fifth Bern Lecture in Comparative Endocrinology. There will also be a talk organized by the American Microscopical Society, at which Dr. Kevin Ecklebarger will give a historical account of influential invertebrate biologists of the recent past.

Symposia are the heart of the annual meeting, and there will be a broad and thought-provoking array of symposia in Orlando. There will be two Society-wide symposia: "Ecological Immunology: Recent Advances and Applications For Conservation and Public Health" (organized by Kelly Lee, Bram Lutton, and Martin Wikelski), and "Metamorphosis: A Multi-Kingdom Approach" (organized by Andreas Heyland, Jason Hodin, Cory Bishop, and Leonid Moroz). The other seven symposia are "Recent Developments in Neurobiology," "Genomic and Proteomic Approaches in Crustacean Biology," "Integrating Function over Marine Life Cycles," "Movers and Shakers: The Evolution and Development of Mesoderm," "EcoPhysiology and Conservation: The Contributions of Energetics," "Biomechanics and Neuromuscular Control," and "Zebrafish in Comparative Context." For more information about these symposia, please see their web pages which are accessible from the SICB website.

II. Description of Program Planning meeting

The Program Planning meeting (started three years ago by Stacia Sower, Past Program Officer, and Sue Burk, SICB Meeting Director) continues to be extremely important in pulling together the entire program for the upcoming annual meeting and to select symposia for the following meeting (over a year hence). This Program Planning meeting (which was held Oct. 8 and 9 in Orlando) includes all of the divisional program officers, representatives from associated societies (AMS and TCS), the SICB program officer, Program Officer-Elect, Meeting Director, and Assistant Meeting Director (the last two from Burk Associates). This annual planning meeting allows the divisional program officers to be more actively involved in the annual meeting and in long-term programmatic planning for the society.

III. Recognition of helpful individuals

It has been a pleasure to work with a group of outstanding individuals during my two years as the Program Officer for SICB: the Past Program Officer (Stacia Sower), all of the hardworking members of the Program Committee, the members of the Executive Committee (especially John Wingfield, Sally Woodin, Ron Dimock, and Sunny Boyd), and all of the symposium organizers and participants who have worked constructively within the programming constraints. My job has been made much easier by the pleasant and efficient input and assistance from the SICB webmaster (Ruedi Birenheide) and the terrific people at Burk Associates (Sue Burk, Lori Strong, and Brett Burk).

I look forward to seeing everyone in Orlando.