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Message from the DVM Officers
Rick Blob, Chair (chair.dvm@sicb.org); Nicole Danos, Program Officer (dpo.dvm@sicb.org); Vanessa Young, Secretary (secretary.dvm@sicb.org); Lara Ferry, Chair-Elect (chairelect.dvm@sicb.org); Alice Gibb, Program Officer-Elect (dpoelect.dvm@sicb.org); Adrien Arias, SPDAC Representative
Greetings everyone! It’s a pleasure to reach out as your DVM officers to report on events from the past 6 months and look ahead to events for the coming year.
To begin, we’ll re-introduce ourselves and welcome new DVM officers. Rick Blob (Chair), Nicole Danos (Program Officer), Lara Ferry (Chair-Elect), and Alice Gibb (Program Officer-Elect) are continuing terms from last year, and Vanessa Young (Secretary) and Adrien Arias (SPDAC Representative) have started their terms as of January. Please reach out to any of us with items you would like to have attention from DVM. We also want to recognize outgoing officers Angela Horner and Kara Feilich, who just completed their terms as DVM Secretary and SPDAC Representative. Thanks to them both for their dedicated service and all of their work for DVM.
SICB 2022 Annual Meeting Recap
The annual SICB meeting is one of the highlights of the year. It’s a time to reconnect with people we care about, make new acquaintances, and see incredible research that challenges us to think differently and inspires ideas for future endeavors. Like so many aspects of our lives, COVID raised concerns about how to go about conference activities that we might have taken for granted in the past. Thanks to the hard work of SICB Executive Officers and Burk Associates, several steps were developed to promote safe attendance at the in-person meeting in Phoenix this January, and provide flexibility for people if their plans changed. Over 1000 attendees were able to participate in Phoenix; moreover, SICB 2022 was happily also available in the virtual SICB+ format, so members unable to attend the meeting in person were still able to engage with this year’s events through early April. DVM was well represented with presentations through both venues, including sponsoring seven of this year’s symposia, and we thank everyone who contributed for sharing their science.
Highlights of those contributions this year were our dedicated Best Student Presentation sessions, which were integrated between in-person and SICB+ submissions. In some exciting news, DVM has been able to raise our contribution to the amount of each award, so that both prizes now amount to $500 each.
SICB 2022 Best Student Presentation Winners
The winner of the D. Dwight Davis Award for oral presentations was Rachel Fleming (currently at Brown University), for the talk “3D Finite Element Models for Sound Transmission in Amphibian Middle Ears.”
For the Karel Liem poster award, the winner was Kiersten Formoso (University of Southern California) for the poster “A functional matrix approach in comparing secondarily aquatic transitions across clades.”
Congratulations to both winners, and thank you to all the students who participated for representing DVM and sharing your research. Thanks also to Lara Ferry for coordinating judging this year, and to all of the volunteers who took time to help with judging.
DVM Member Input on the Use of DVM Discretionary Funds
Through Division-specific dues paid by our members, DVM has been able to provide resources to help support regional SICB meetings and the Divisional social at the annual meeting. An additional goal for these dues was to build funds that could be devoted to new initiatives that promote the field of Vertebrate Morphology and the ability of DVM members to work in this area. The funds we now have available make this a good year to organize initiatives for DVM to support. We are eager to have input from DVM members to guide these decisions. One use that received wide support at the Divisional Members Meeting in January was the increased support for our Student Best Presentation winners mentioned above. To facilitate further input, we will be distributing a survey to gather feedback on several proposals, and provide an opportunity for members to suggest new ideas. One goal for these initiatives is to try to support ideas that are not already addressed in some way through the Society. Please keep an eye out for a request from DVM to share your thoughts on discretionary fund use.
Upcoming SICB Symposia – 2023 and beyond
Symposia are opportunities for DVM members to present exciting and forward-looking research to all of SICB and, through publishing in Integrative and Comparative Biology, to the broader scientific community. For example, here are the outstanding symposia that DVM will be sponsoring at our 2023 meeting in Austin.
- Pathways to adulthood: environmental, developmental, and evolutionary influences on the ontogeny of form and function
- Biology at birth: the role of infancy in providing the foundation for lifetime success
- The role of mechanosensation in robust locomotion
- Micro-scale life, large-scale influencers: functional consequences of small-scale biophysical processes
- Visions for a diverse, inclusive & safe future for field biology
- Sexual diversity and variation
If you’ve been thinking “what a great opportunity, I’d like to organize a symposium”…you can!!! In fact, SICB will help you. SICB is now offering additional incentives for symposium organizers, and helpful guidelines for preparing a symposium proposal can be found at the link on the SICB meetings page. Applications are welcome from SICB members at any career stage. DVM has submitted fewer proposals in recent years, and it would be great to see more DVM members leading these events at future meetings. So go for it! C’mon, you know you want to. Applications for the 2024 meeting are due in August 2023, which is plenty of time to put together a great proposal – but no time is like the present to get started! Please reach out to Program Officer Nicole Danos with any questions and for feedback on your ideas – we can’t wait to see your proposals and symposia!
Regional SICB Meetings – This Could Be You!
The annual SICB meeting is great, but is one SICB per year really enough? Of course not. But what to do?? We have a suggestion – consider organizing a regional meeting! These are usually 1-2 day events with a single session of shorter presentations, but many formats are possible. They’re especially great opportunities for student presentations, and to try out ideas ahead of the annual meeting. Several regions have run these for many years with great success, and DVM is happy to offer sponsorship for regional meetings, usually up to $500. For fall events, summer is a great time to start pulling plans together. Please reach out to Rick Blob if you’re thinking about organizing a meeting in your region.
Upcoming Symposium
DVM Member Spotlights
We are interested in streamlining the spring and fall newsletters, while also using this communication as a way to highlight our division members, especially early-career members. If you have photos or other features that you would like to submit for consideration in future newsletters, please reach out to Vanessa Young.
Student Journalist Features DVM Member Research
In 2013, SICB began a student journalist program to help early-career researchers develop their scientific communication skills. Student journalists receive travel support for SICB in exchange for a news story about another scholar’s research that was presented at the meeting. At this year’s SICB meeting, student journalist Mateo Rull-Garza selected DVM member Kara Feilich’s talk on three-dimensional tongue kinematics during chewing in macaque primates for an article that has recently been published on SICB’s website. Check it out here!
DVM Member Photo Feature
Spring 2022 Elections
We will be selecting a new Secretary-Elect for the division in this year’s spring elections. Many thanks to Susan Williams, Andrew Clark, and Sharlene Santana for serving as the nominating committee for this election. We have two excellent candidates to choose from: Stephanie Crofts and Crystal Reynaga. Thank you Stephanie and Crystal for your willingness to serve DVM!
Members: please review the candidate bios below and be sure to cast your vote! Remember, you can vote in elections as long as your SICB membership was current at the time of the 2022 meeting; student members are also eligible to vote.
Candidates for DVM Secretary-Elect
Stephanie Crofts
Current Position: Assistant Prof. of Biology at College of the Holy Cross
Education: BA, University of Chicago, PhD, University of Washington, Seattle (Adam Summers – Advisor)
Professional Experience: Fall 2020 –present Assistant Prof. of Biology at College of the Holy Cross; 2017 – 2020 postdoctoral researcher at UIUC with Phil Anderson; 2015 – 2017 postdoctoral researcher at NJIT with Brooke Flammang
SICB Activities: SICB member since 2008 in DCB and DVM. DVM & DCB student presentation judge.
Other Memberships: International Society for Vertebrate Morphology
Research Interests: Comparative biomechanics and functional morphology, particularly of teeth and puncture tools. Current projects range from sea urchin spines to crocodilian teeth.
Statement of Goals: SICB has been my home meeting since the start of my grad career, and I am so excited at the opportunity to give-back to the community that has played such an important role in my development personally and professionally. It would be my goal as DVM Secretary to help continue the on-going work of making the society and conference a more open, accessible, and inclusive environment. One of the things I love about SICB is how student-friendly it is and I hope to find ways to encourage more meaningful participation for faculty and students from PUI institutions, both at the society-wide meeting and via smaller regional meetings, especially as travel and face-to-face meetings become more feasible.
Crystal Reynaga (she/her)
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Biology, Bryn Mawr College
Education: B.S. University of California, Santa Cruz (2012); Ph.D. University of California, Irvine (2018)
Professional Experience: Postdoctoral Researcher, Duke University (2018-2020); Assistant Professor, Bryn Mawr College (2020-Present)
SICB Activities: Member for 10 years (2011); Broadening Participation Committee Member (2018-Present)
Other memberships: American Physiological Society (APS); Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS); Society for Experimental Biology (SEB)
Research Interests: My lab seeks to understand how movement arises in response to changes in the mechanical properties of the physical environment. We accomplish this by investigating how the evolution of locomotor specialization coincides with morphology, motor control, and muscle physiology primarily in frogs.
Statement of Goals: I attended my first SICB meeting in Charleston, South Carolina as a junior undergraduate student in 2011. It was a transformative experience as a budding biologist and has continued to be a crucial part of my development as a scientist. As a young scientist I have appreciated the welcoming feeling of DVM meetings and would be honored to be a part of the inner workings of the division. I have been fortunate to serve the SICB community as a current member of the Broadening Participation (BP) Committee, which I joined in 2020 as a postdoc, ultimately to serve the community which enabled and fostered my continued participation at SICB (through conference travel grants). My contributions to the BP committee have enabled me to reflect on my time as a young scientist to determine the barriers (and act upon them) that have been in existence throughout my journey to becoming a Chicana scientist. I look forward to continuing to serve the Society and make these routes clearer for new scientists who follow.