Message from the President

L. Patricia Hernandez, president@sicb.org

Hello everyone! I am, once again, thrilled to announce that we are preparing for the largest SICB meeting in our history to be held Jan. 3-7 in Atlanta, GA. Please be aware that we needed to include an additional poster session on the last day to be able to squeeze in all the amazing science planned for this meeting. Please see the message below from our program officer for more details.

I am happy to announce that we will be unveiling the first draft of our Strategic Plan in January. I am very proud of all the work that has gone into coming up with a reasonable, but truly visionary plan for our society. Every division and major committee had the opportunity to suggest items of interest for their members. Using these suggestions we have devised a 5-year plan emphasizing mentoring for our early career researchers, increasing our fundraising efforts, organically growing our membership, and potentially reorganizing and rebranding our different divisions. I look forward to rolling out this plan soon. It is my hope that every five years we can recommit to doing this kind of strategic planning to keep us focused on realistically accomplishing the goals of the society. 

One of the things that became abundantly clear during this strategic planning period is that we will need to put a significantly greater effort into our fundraising. As I have said before, we have become victims of our own success regarding student support. Thus, we need to significantly grow this fund. Apropos this, I am begging ANYONE who can possibly afford it to donate to our Mangum Fund. ANY amount that you can give will help us convince big dollar donors that we have a committed membership. Please donate here!!!

As has become our standard practice, we will once again have a strictly enforced Code of Conduct during our annual meeting. We are currently working with our Safety Officer, Paula Brantner, to expedite reporting of any incidents to better serve and protect our members. 

As I did last year, I want to mention that masks are still welcome at the meeting. Before 2020 we had many members reaching out to ask if we could change the timing of our annual meeting because of the inevitable respiratory ailments that were associated with attending “SICKB”. I have found that wearing a mask during conferences has allowed me to completely avoid such illnesses. I will mostly be wearing a mask during our meeting, and I ask that others consider doing so as well. I also request that we all be respectful of everyone’s choices regarding masking at the meeting.

Message from the President-Elect

Michele Nishiguchi, president.elect@sicb.org

Atlanta 2025 is going to be a very exciting meeting. Being involved in the BIO-LEAPs grant, we have some fun activities to get members involved in creating a more inclusive society. SICBEDU BIO LEAPS will have a table (shared with our BP committee) that will be among all the other vendors in the exhibition hall to answer questions regarding inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA). We hope that you stop by, along with reaching out to members in the society who are new to SICB or are interested in creating a more inclusive society. To start off our BIO LEAPS activities, we will be having a scavenger hunt for our student and postdoctoral members, where they will be “searching” for seasoned members who have various attributes with respect to SICB (e.g., attended more than 10 annual meetings, held an office, etc..). There will be many prizes (so not just one winner), and we hope that this activity will bring members from different groups together in conversation. So stay tuned for the announcement at the plenary session. Finally, SICB is always searching for members who would like to be involved more on our numerous committees. If you are, please contact me, or sign up on our volunteer sheet. 

Message from the Program Officer and Program Officer-Elect

Janet Steven, programofficer@sicb.org and Matt McHenry, programofficer.elect@sicb.org

The 2025 meeting is going to be bigger and better than ever! When you come to Atlanta in January, you will be able to attend presentations on everything from fast starts to frass. The meeting will feature twelve symposia, six outstanding special lectures, and four full days of talks and posters – that’s right, you heard me, FOUR FULL DAYS– plus workshops for members at every career stage, and social events to connect you with your people.

 Register for the conference here and book your room in the conference hotel here.  We have presentations happening until 6:30 PM on the 7th and our discounted hotel rates extend to the 9th – plan to attend the last day of the conference as you make your travel arrangements. Check out the meeting webpage here for more details!

 

 

This year, The Program Committee piloted a new approach towards building a program. Program Officer- Elect Matt McHenry is designing software to leverage the strength of AI in building a schedule for the annual meeting that is intended to group similar presentations while building an overall schedule that attempts to minimize similarity among sessions scheduled for the same day and time.  This year, we used the software to generate drafts that were then reviewed and edited by the Divisional Program Officers. Let us know what you think!

 The SICB meetings are developing a reputation for being a welcoming environment, and YOU are one of the reasons why! Please extend a welcome to new SICB members and members of our partner societies, The Crustacean Society, The American Microscopical Society, and Minorities in Shark Sciences, when you meet them at the meeting.  If you need accommodations or assistance of any sort, make sure you indicate that when you register and/or visit the registration desk during the meeting. We also take our code of conduct seriously, and we know you do too. Help us support excellent integrative and comparative biology by supporting the scientists who are learning, doing and sharing it.

Message from the Secretary and Secretary-Elect

Marianne Porter, secretary@sicb.org  and Vanessa Hilliard, secretary.elect@sicb.org

In spring 2024, SICB held elections for three society-wide officers. Rick Blob will be our new President-Elect, Nicole Danos was elected as our Treasurer-Elect, and Bradley Davison will be the incoming Member-at-Large. Rick, Nicole, and Bradley will take office in February 2025. The elections also saw new leadership elected for most SICB divisions, and several divisions voted to amend their bylaws. Congratulations to all the new elected officers, and thank you to all SICB members who agreed to be candidates. Your time and willingness to serve SICB is very much appreciated! The full election report can be found here. 

As you read this newsletter, preparations for the 2025 annual meeting are in full swing. Please make sure you read this society-wide newsletter to learn about the hard work all the committees have been undertaking. Please see the divisional newsletters for great information about Mentoring Programs, Best Student Presentation Competitions, Symposia, and Social Events planned for the annual meeting.

 

 SICB is an amazing scientific home for many of us and the annual meetings are an important formative experience for many students; this all happens through the service of SICB members. At any point in time there are nearly 200 SICB members serving the society. The society-wide and divisional nominating committees are forming now to identify candidates for the Spring 2025 elections. If you are interested in being a candidate, please contact the appropriate nominating committee. The list of upcoming officers elections can be found on SICB Schedule of Upcoming Elections webpage. If you would like to volunteer for a SICB committee you can always fill out our Volunteer To Serve form.  We also want to take this opportunity to remind all our early career members, especially SICB students and post docs, you are able to vote in SICB elections. 

Message from the Treasurer and Treasurer-Elect

Miriam Ashley-Ross, treasurer@sicb.org and Brian Tsukimura (treasurer.elect@sicb.org)

It is hard to believe that this is the last SICB newsletter column I’ll write! However, it’s true – having served two terms as your Society Treasurer, it’s time to pass the baton to my worthy successor, Brian Tsukimura (himself no stranger to SICB service). Rather than dragging things out, I’ll try (for once) to keep things brief.

 We had an extremely successful meeting in Seattle, and look to be smashing records for the upcoming Atlanta meeting: 2074 abstracts were submitted, which is an all-time high. I think it’s safe to say that SICB is on a good trajectory.

 

As I have mentioned before in my columns, the Executive Officers are making decisions that we think will keep the Society on sound financial footing. Additionally, we are working to ensure that SICB can grow and serve its membership better going forward. Of particular concern are graduate students, postdocs, and young faculty – we want to create value for you by holding (largely virtual so the maximum number of people can participate) networking events and workshops throughout the year so that SICB is more than “just” the Annual Meeting. We’re continuing to look at increasing Mangum support for graduate students (we have set aside $90,000, much of it from operating funds, to defray grad student housing costs at the Atlanta meeting), and we’d like to do more. Here’s my customary pitch for donating to the Mangum Fund: the amount we can draw from it each year is nowhere near $90K; if the Fund were larger, we would have to devote less from our general operating funds. In the future, we’d also like to be able to offer travel support for postdocs as well, since the sources of funds available to them to assist with the costs of meeting attendance are more limited, but those details remain to be worked out. More on new initiatives to increase the value of SICB to members will be forthcoming as we finalize our Strategic Plan, which I’ll leave to our President, Patricia Hernandez, to describe.

Communications Editor Report

Molly Jacobs, comm.editor@sicb.org

Do you have thoughts about social media and SICB? Until recently, SICB primarily used Twitter (X), but we’re aware that many SICB members have diversified their social media presence recently. The SICB 2024 social media survey reflected this: there is no single social media platform that will serve all or even the majority of SICB members, and there was little overlap in the platforms favored by members at different career stages. Because the current social media landscape is dynamic, we’re repeating the social media survey this year.  Please take a moment to fill it out HERE, even if you already filled it out last year!

 

As part of our strategic planning, we will be evaluating the way we communicate with all of our members, including social media, our website, newsletters, member updates, and email blasts. Please feel free to share your ideas with me at comm.editor@sicb.org!

Update from the Editor and Managing Editor, Integrative and Comparative Biology

Ulrike Müller,Editor in Chief, ICB, editor.icb@sicb.org

ICB has had an exciting publishing year with symposium publications such as Experimental Studies of Bioinspired Shark Denticles for Drag Reduction by Marshall T. Graybill and Nicole W. Xu. We have also continued to expand our invited groupings with issue 2’s Global Change in a Material World organized by Nicholas Burnett and Talia Moore. We’d love to host more invited groupings along with our symposium issues. If you have an idea for such a grouping (6-12 papers by authors on a topic of your choice) reach out via icbjournal@sicb.org . 

 

 

We are also looking forward to our invited grouping from (BIMS) Black in Marine Science coming up in issue 4 of this year. 

We will greatly miss Associate Editor, Corinne Richards -Zawacki, as she’s rotating off. Her service and time has been invaluable and we wish her the best with her continued work. 

We welcome Associate Editor, Jamie Voyles whose lab uses a very wide variety of techniques (both in the laboratory and in the field) to pursue key questions in the study of infectious disease. The ability to work across multiple levels of biological organization, and implement many different techniques, allows her lab to actively pursue exciting questions in disease ecology and investigate how infectious disease is shaping our natural world.

 

Assistant Editors we are welcoming this year are:

• Mary Kate O’Donnell (non divisional)  whose research broadly encompasses the biomechanics of feeding and locomotion with an emphasis on amphibians and reptiles.
• Michael Logan (non divisional) whose lab works primarily with Anolis lizards in the Neotropics, but is not wedded to a single system. They have also worked with insects and snakes, and will always remain open to new avenues of scientific inquiry to address the questions that fascinate them.
• Jonathan Allen (DIZ representative) whose lab studies the ecology and evolution of larval, juvenile and adult forms in diverse organisms including sea urchins, sea stars, snails, flatworms, hemichordates, and many others. His labis particularly interested in projects at the intersection of ecology, evolution and development. 

Update from the Editor, Integrative Organismal Biology

Rick Blob, Interim Editor-in-Chief, editor.IOB@sicb.org

The past six months have brought several transitions and new initiatives to IOB. This summer, our founding Editor-in-Chief, Adam Summers, stepped down from IOB. We give Adam our sincere thanks for his enormous effort in starting our newest SICB journal: recruiting associate editors, submissions and reviews; promoting the profile of the Journal; and instilling IOB with a distinct perspective among peer journals, and an approach to handling manuscripts that seeks to provide authors with the most constructive publication experience possible. Adam will be missed at IOB and we wish him the best. Former IOB Associate Editor Rick Blob stepped in as Interim Editor-in-Chief in July. When Rick moves to the role of SICB President-elect shortly after the 2025 Annual Meeting, current IOB Associate Editor Ignacio Moore will become Interim Editor-in-Chief to complete the remaining years of Adam’s original appointment. In addition to these changes, we are also happy to announce the addition of new Associate Editor Patricia Lopes, bringing further expertise in endocrinology, immunology, and animal behavior to the IOB Board.

 

A new initiative at IOB is reaching out to connect with other biological societies at their Annual Meetings. This year we have planned an exhibit booth swap with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, with the goal of increasing interactions between our groups. We hope to see more paleontological submissions to IOB, and hope you’ll seek out the SVP booth at SICB’s next annual meeting.

IOB continues to actively seek manuscript submissions from SICB members, including original research papers as well as reviews, commentaries, and other article types. Why choose IOB for your next paper? So many reasons! (see here) To highlight a few:

• We are SICB’s (i.e., your) Open Access journal! Our editors are SICB members with wide research expertise, working hard to ensure constructive, fair, and fast handling of submissions with double blind peer review
• We are widely indexed and have a strong impact factor
• The backing and reach of SICB connects IOB to a wide audience
• We are Society owned and published by the not-for-profit Oxford University Press, so Article Processing Charges (APCs) help support SICB initiatives
• APCs are steeply discounted for SICB members (currently <$1500), considerably lower than comparable OA journals 
• Many institutions already have Read and Publish agreements with Oxford University Press that will pay for Open Access publication in IOB – yours might already be on the list! If your institution does not yet have an R&P agreement with Oxford, consider writing your Institutional Librarian to recommend beginning one – a single message could have major benefits.

Please complete this 3 question survey about IOB if you have time.  Feel free to reach out with any questions to iob_editor@sicb.org, or iobjournal@sicb.org, or stop by our booth at the Annual Meeting in Atlanta!

Broadening Participation Committee Report

Susan Williams, Chair, chair.BPC@sicb.org

The Broadening Participation Committee is looking forward to SICB 2025 and excited for the opportunity to support students through the Professional Development Travel Awards. These awards are partially funded by a generous donation from the Gans Collections and Charitable Fund Inc., a foundation established by renowned vertebrate morphologist and functional anatomist, Carl Gans. Applications closed on October 24 and we are busy reviewing the over 100 (!) submissions. SICB 2025 in Atlanta appears to be a very popular meeting! Speaking of Atlanta, BPC will be hosting two socials (the Broadening Participation Meet & Greet on Jan 3 and the Broadening Participation Social on Jan 5) as well as a workshop on Jan 5. Check out the online program for more information on these events.

Finally, we are pleased to announce the winners of our 2025 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) Service Award. We received many outstanding applications, and it was great to see that many SICB members are doing excellent and notable DEIJ work at the universities, in their communities and more broadly. I am pleased to announce that the winners of the 2025 awards are: 

Dr. Mehrnoush Nourbakhsh-Rey received her PhD in 2024 in Cellular and Behavioral Neurobiology from the University of Oklahoma. Her dissertation research focused on leptinergic regulation of communication signals in weakly electric fish.  Dr. Nourbakhsh-Rey’s DEIJ efforts have been impactful locally, regionally, and internationally. As a graduate student, she served as a founding member of her department’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Committee and as an executive member of the STEM Inclusion Council, including president and treasurer, at the University of Oklahoma. She is active in supporting and raising awareness for human rights, particularly those that affect women, through organizations that serve cities in Oklahoma and the Middle East.  For her work promoting DEIJ, Dr. Nourbakhsh-Rey will receive a $1,400 honorarium.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Avery Russell is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Biology at Missouri State University. His research is on the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of plants and their pollinators, with a special focus on pollinator cognition. Dr. Russell is being recognized with this award for his extensive and impactful DEIJ-centered university and professional society service focused on graduate student advocacy and mentorship, accessibility, inclusive admissions and teaching practices, and promotion and tenure. Dr. Russell will receive a $300 honorarium. 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Natalie Holt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology & Organismal Biology at UC Riverside. Their research is on the physiology of skeletal muscle contractions and how muscles power animal movement. Dr. Holt is being recognized for their efforts in educational innovation focused on the intersection of biology and systems and oppression, extensive mentoring of individuals from historically excluded groups, and driving significant change in departmental climate and faculty hiring. Dr. Holt will receive a $300 honorarium.

Student-Postdoctoral Affairs Committee Report

Christine Lattin, Chair, chair.spdac@sicb.org

We have several updates related to the Atlanta meeting!:

• This year’s SPDAC Workshop topic is “Non-Academic Scientific Jobs” and will take place on Monday, January 6 from 12:15-1:15 p.m. Our 3-4 speakers from industry, non-profit, and government positions will give brief “lightning talks” describing their career paths and then participate in a panel discussion and respond to audience questions. Lunch will be provided for the first 50 who register, but everyone is welcome! Keep your eye out for the email with registration information. 
• Do you want to meet more of your fellow students and postdocs? Look for your Student/Postdoc Reps who will be hosting a “Social-Within-A-Social” at the Initial Welcome Reception on Friday, January 3 (8:30-10:30 pm). They will be wearing tie-dyed shirts and name tags with ribbons! 

 

• Please stop by the SPDAC Booth in the Atrium Ballroom during the coffee breaks and poster sessions to “Ask a Student/Postdoc Rep” your burning questions about ways students and postdocs can participate in the society, applying for jobs and fellowships, time management, networking, and anything else you can think of! We will have our snazzy new SPDAC stickers available (see winning submissions from graduate students/artists Joseph Wu, Morgan Clark, and Susan Anderson) as well as lots of candy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Another thing students and postdocs can do at the booth: sign up to participate in a focus group during the meeting to give us feedback on our new SPDAC Strategic Plan. We want to hear what YOU think about our goals for the next few years. What are we getting right? What are we missing?
• Terms for our Student/Postdoc Reps from DCB, DCE, DEDE and DNNSB will be  complete after the meeting. If you are a grad student or postdoc member of any of those societies, and are interested in getting involved with SPDAC, please email Chair Christine Lattin: chair.spdac@sicb.org. 

Educational Council Report

Veronica Martinez Acosta, Chair, (chair.EdCouncil@sicb.org)

The Educational Council has been hard at work preparing for the 2025 annual meeting. We are collaborating with Gabriel-Philip Santos (Co-Founder of Cosplay for Science,PBS Eons), Lisa Lundgren (Utah State University), and Greg Pask (Middlebury College) for the Teaching and Learning X (TAL-X) workshop, “Cosplay for Science: Leveling Up Your Science Outreach.” Be sure to place it on your schedule for the 2025 meeting – Monday, Jan. 6th (7-9pm). We are also excited to announce that the John A. Moore Lecturer for SICB’s closing plenary on Tuesday, Jan. 7th (5:30-6:30pm) will be Dr. Catherine Quinlan, Associate Professor of Science Education at Howard University. Finally, we have selected this year’s winner of the M. Patricia Morse Award for Excellence and Innovation in Science Education. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Haley O’Brien! We will present the Morse Award right before the Moore Lecture. 

Please don’t forget that SICB typically has several posters and talks about education-related topics, from pedagogy to partnership & outreach. Keep an eye out for those on the program schedule! 

After great success last year, Ed Council will host a booth at the 2025 meeting again.  Stop by and chat and participate in our NEW Teaching Table Topics, where SICB faculty members offer insight on various topics of interest including – Ask a science educator!; Making and Using Games in the Classroom; Making a class your own – to name a few. If you’d like to offer a Teaching Table Topic, please email Chair.EdCouncil@sicb.org

And at long last SICB’s Biology Education, Assessment, & Research Resources library (BEARR) will have pilot a submission process through the SICB website. Stay tuned for an announcement as we get closer to the meeting. As a reminder, we continue to provide teaching support through maintaining databases for resources for online biology instruction.

Lastly, we are looking for three (3) NEW Ed Council members, we welcome nominees from all divisions but are especially looking for representation from DCB, DCE, DOB, DEDB, DEDE and DIZ. We would also love to have at least one (1) postdoctoral fellow as a member. If you have suggestions, please send an email to presidentelect@sicb.org and Chair.EdCouncil@sicb.org. 

Development Committee Report

Frank Fish, Chair, chair.development@sicb.org

It is that time of year for Tricks or Treats. So why don’t you treat yourself and SICB to a donation. SICB is one of the premier societies for research, education and public awareness in organismal, functional and evolutionary biology. The society is aided in its mission through the generous donations by individuals. These donations help to support a number of awards to acknowledge excellence in presentations, provide research grants to students, and maintain operation of the society. A full listing of all awards and supporting funds can be found at SICB Donations website (https://sicb.org/donations/ ) or use the QR code below to take you to the webpage. 

Please help to keep SICB strong and vibrant by making a donation. No donation is too small. Donations are gratefully accepted for any amount online and can be directed through the preferred fund that you choose at https://sicb.org/donations/  

Please help SICB continue its important mission with your generous support. So get in the Spirit and don’t be Spooked make a donation this Halloween. 

 

The Development Committee asks for your assistance in honoring those current or former members of SICB, who have passed. We ask that information on the departed be forwarded to SICB or the chair of the Development Committee, Frank Fish (ffish@wcupa.edu). The notification will be used as part of a presentation, In Memoriam, that will appear at the society business meeting in January in Atlanta, Georgia. It is important to remember those individuals who participated in the presentations of their research, operation of the society, and  attendance at meetings. We need to show and honor how these departed members made a contribution to their friends, colleagues, SICB, and science.

PUI Action Group Report

Jerry Husak, Action Group Chair, jerry.husak@stthomas.edu

The PUI (Primarily Undergraduate Institution) Action Group will have several events at the 2025 meeting! Our informational booth will return for community building and daily activities during coffee breaks and poster sessions. We’ll also host office hours there for mentoring sessions, so stop by to sign up!

We will have an interactive poster at the Tuesday (Jan 7) poster session on being a productive PI at a PUI. Come by to see how successful PUI PIs maintain productivity and to offer your own insights!

We’re also starting our mentoring villages and will have sessions during coffee breaks. We’ll have a village for grad students and postdocs who want to be at a PUI, as well as a village for early-career PIs. More info to come on when these sessions will take place. 

Once again, we will host a PUI breakfast social. All who are interested are welcome – stay tuned for information on when and where! 

We’ll also have some virtual meet-ups after the Atlanta meeting and will send emails about those to all on our email list. If you’re interested in any of these, follow us on our X account @SICB_PUI and sign up to get on our mailing list!