Message from the Program Officer
Eduardo Rosa-Molinar
¡Saludos
from Puerto Rico, the Island of Enchantment! I hope all of you are
doing well. Similar to our historic presidential election, the
upcoming 2009 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)
Annual Meeting at the Westin Boston Waterfront in Boston,
Massachusetts, January 3-7, 2009 promises to be historic and will
break SICB records! We received 1363 abstracts (this number includes
only symposium and contributed talks and poster presentations),
making it the largest SICB meeting ever. There will be two
society-wide symposia and eight regular symposia covering a wide
range of topics and spanning SICB divisions. Each of these symposia
has a full day of speakers and many have additional complimentary
oral and poster sessions. We have three workshops (Evolutionary
Ontologies, Phylogenetics for Dummies, and Communicating Science).
The
Evolutionary Ontologies workshop is organized by Paula Mabee
of University of South Dakota, Todd Vision, of National Evolutionary
Synthesis Center (NESCent), Monte Westerfield, of University of
Oregon, and Barry Smith, of National Center for Biomedical Ontologies
(NCBO). This workshop is to educate and to promote integration of
evolutionary biology with genetic, genomic, and developmental data
through ontologies. The Phylogenetics for Dummies workshop
organized by DSEB will focus on basic techniques and provide an
overview of advances in tree reconstruction, analysis of character
evolution, phylogenetic comparative methods, data mining of sequence
databases for phylogenetic analysis, and much more. The
Communicating Science workshop, held by the Coalition on the
Public Understanding of Science (COPUS), will provide various
strategies (i.e., science festivals, science cafés, and blogging)
for communicating science to the general public and will also discuss
the strategies’ benefits, impact and effectiveness.
The
plenary lecture this year will be by Ira Flatow, National
Public Radio’s Talk of The Nation: Science Friday, who will
kick off events with a presentation emphasizing the importance of
public understanding of science. We have also scheduled excellent
society-wide lectures such as the Howard Bern lecture and the
George A. Bartholomew Award lecture. In addition, we have
reinstated the John Alexander Moore lectureship. John A.
Moore’s work in the fields of embryology and genetics resulted in
his being elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Moore,
however, is best known as an educator and his creation of the Science
as a Way of Knowing (SAAWOK) series. The Moore lectureship was
established in 1990 by the SICB Education Committee. Thomas E.
Lovejoy III was the first Moore Lecturer in 1993. For the
2009 SICB meeting the Moore Lecturer is Sean B. Carroll, University
of Wisconsin-Madison.
At
the 2009 SICB meeting in collaboration with COPUS, we will launch the
Understanding Science Web site and its new paradigm for
portraying the process of science. Ken Miller of Brown University
will join forces with Natalie Kuldell of MIT to officially launch the
site. In addition, we will be joining COPUS in launching their Year
of Science 2009 celebration and in holding three Science Cafés in
surrounding Boston neighborhoods where we will bring cutting-edge
science from the 2009 SICB meeting to the Boston public. The Boston
community will hear first hand about exciting new developments in
science.
The
welcoming social, coffee breaks, and the end-of-meeting dessert
social in honor of students and post-docs will provide time for
interaction and discussions among the membership and visitors.
The
headquarters hotel, the Westin
Boston Waterfront
(http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1528)
is
surrounded by all types of attractions, restaurants, nightlife and
entertainment. With the exception of the Science Cafés, all
events—registration, vendors’ exhibits, posters, society-wide
lectures and meetings, and coffee breaks--will be in the hotel. Keep
checking the SICB website (http://www.sicb.org)
for updates regarding the 2009 meeting.
Every
year one of the tasks we have at the programming meeting is to
discuss, debate, and choose the symposia and to award divisional
financial support for the following year. Congratulations to all of
you for your work in organizing the 2009 meeting. I look forward to
working with all of you over the next months! For the 2010 SICB
meeting in Seattle the approved symposia are
Alexa Bely: Animal Regeneration:
Integrating Development, Ecology, and Evolution. Divisional
support: DCDB, DDEB, DIZ, DEE, AMS
James M Harper: Metabolism, Life
History and Aging. Divisional support: DCPB, DEE
David Lambert: Spiralian development:
Conservation and innovation. Divisional support: DCDB, DDEB
Paulyn Cartwright: Assembling the
Cnidarian Tree of Life. Divisional support: DIZ, DSEB
James B. McClintock: Advances in
Antarctic Marine Biology. Divisional support: DCPB, DIZ, DEE
Melissa Bowlin: Integrative Migration
Biology. Divisional support: DAB, DNB, DCE
Sarah Berke: Marine Ecosystem
Engineers in a Changing World: Establishing Links Across Systems.
Divisional support: DIZ, DEE, AMS
Michael Hart: Evolutionary Paths
among Developmental Possibilities: A Symposium Marking the
Contributions and Influence of Richard Strathmann. Divisional
support: DIZ, DSEB, AMS
Patrick Martone: Mechanics without
Muscle: Evolutionary Design of Macrophytes. Divisional support: DCB
Jeff
Walker: Contemporary Approaches to the Study of the Evolution of
Fish Body Plan and Fin Shape. Divisional support: DVM, DCB, DNB,
DEE, DAB
Finally,
the SICB Society Executive Officers, Webmaster, Divisional and
Associated Societies Program Officers, symposia and workshop
organizers, COPUS, specifically Sheri Potter and Natalie Kuldell,
Burk & Associates, and I have worked very hard to make the 2009
SICB meeting as productive and engaging as possible. I want to thank
all of you for your patience and support during my first year as
Program Officer. Any complaints and/or concerns please let me know.
It has been an honor and a privilege to have served and worked with
you all. We all look forward to seeing you in Boston at the start of
the New Year!