Message from DEDE Leadership

Laura Zimmerman, chair.dede@sicb.org; Patricia C. Lopes, secretary.dede@sicb.org; Laura Mydlarz, dpo.dede@sicb.org

This year’s SICB Annual Meeting will take a new format, allowing people to participate either in person and/or virtually. These are uncharted territories for the society but given the huge success of last year’s virtual meeting, we are excited for these changes. We hope that this format will help promote inclusion and access to people who would not have otherwise been able to participate in the meeting. 

 DEDE will be sponsoring 3 symposia at the 2022 Annual Meeting:

1.   Ecoimmunology: what unconventional organisms tell us after two decades. Organizers: Vania Assis and Stefanny Monteiro.
2.   Open source solutions in experimental design. Organizers: Kirk Onthank and Richelle Tanner.
3.   DNA metabarcoding across disciplines: sequencing our way to greater understanding across scales of biological organization. Organizers: Anna Forsman, Michelle Gaither and Anna Savage.

 We will once again run the “Meet an Ecoimmunologist/Disease Ecologist” event during this annual meeting. This event is being organized by Jenn Houtz, our postdoc representative, and it provides students and postdocs with an opportunity to network with established professionals and meet other students/postdocs in our field. We will solicit for mentors and send a signup form to student/postdoc registrants in December via the email you provide during registration. Email Jenn Houtz (jlh498@cornell.edu) with any questions.

If you have ideas for a symposium for the 2023 meeting, please email the division’s program officer (Laura Mydlarz) at dpo.dede@sicb.org.

 We are active on Twitter (@SICB_DEDE) and we would like to encourage all members interested in the DEDE division to follow us for news on papers and other important information. The other thing we use Twitter for is to remind people to apply for leadership positions.  

Speaking of new leadership positions, Sarah Knutie will start her DEDE Secretary-Elect term in 2022 and Daniel Becker will start as DEDE Program Officer-Elect. Jim Adelman will take over as DEDE Chair at the end of the 2022 annual meeting. In Spring 2022, we will be electing a new Chair of the division (who will serve as Chair-Elect in 2023). We welcome self-nominations for this important leadership role! If you would like to be considered as a candidate in the upcoming election for chair, please contact Patricia Lopes (secretary.dede@sicb.org) and she will pass your information to the divisional nominating committee.

There is exciting news from some of our members that we would like to share! Laura Zimmerman has been awarded a AAAS Science & Technology policy fellowship. The fellowship provides scientists a firsthand look at the federal policy process while allowing them to contribute their scientific expertise and experience in a variety of executive branch agencies and in Congress. Zimmerman will be spending the year working with Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C. to advance policy relating to health services research. Fellows represent a full spectrum of disciplines, backgrounds, and career stages. Interested in the fellowship? Check out the website for this fellowship or feel free to contact Laura Zimmerman directly.

 Finally, we have the ability to contribute to the SICB Monthly Member Updates to share information about meetings, workshops, or other opportunities in ecoimmunology and disease ecology. So, if you didn’t share some news or information in this Fall SICB newsletter, please be in touch with the Division Secretary (secretary.dede@sicb.org) with the information you want to disseminate. This needs to be done no later than the 4th of any given month to be included in that month’s email update.