Biophysical Society Bulletin | December 2020

President’s Message

Report fromCouncil The BPS Fall Council meeting usual- ly takes place in the Society head- quarters in Rockville, Maryland, and

Jennifer Ross , Council member and Nominating Committee Chair, presented the 2021 slate of candidates for Council approval. The Nominating Committee did an excellent job developing the slate, and the candidates will be announced June 1, 2021, when the election opens. As mentioned in our April column reporting on the Febru- ary Council meetings, a panel of BPS members worked on strategic recommendations for the Biophysical Journal . The recommendations spanned content, process, and structure and were provided to the Publications Committee over the summer. Publications Committee Chair Kathleen Hall partici- pated in the Fall Council meeting and shared the Committee’s response and proposed actions with Council. Council agreed that Biophysical Journal is a critical component of the Society both in terms of a venue for our members to publish and its financial contributions to the organization. Director of Pub- lications Beth Staehle provided an update on public relations and marketing efforts related to the journal including some new initiatives to help authors promote their work. The Publications Committee made a recommendation to Council for the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of Biophysical Reports . Work on the new journal is underway, and we look forward to our first call for papers in early 2021. BPS Treasurer Kalina Hristova presented the Finance Com- mittee approved budget for 2021 to Council. Due to impacts of the pandemic on the Annual Meeting and membership, the Society is facing a deficit operating budget for the up- coming year. However, due to good fiscal management, BPS has healthy reserves that will carry us through a down year without negatively effecting programs and services for you, our members. In fact, we aim to offer more programming and resources throughout 2021 than in previous years including different types of career panels and workshops, more virtual network- ing events, and more resources to support you and your work in the biophysics community. What else can we do for you? Please reach out to us at royerc@rpi.edu or jpesanelli@bio- physics.org with any suggestions or feedback as to how we can best support you now and into the future.

is preceded by a day of abstract programming for the upcoming Annual Meeting. As COVID-19 con- tinued to bear down on us, these meetings took place virtually.

Catherine A. Royer

The abstract programming meeting was held Wednesday, No- vember 4, and was a fun experiment in transitioning the usual array of hundreds of colored post-it notes on a custom board into a virtual patchwork of colored cells in a Google Sheet. The result was the creation of 56 platform sessions and 89 poster sessions that will accompany 16 Subgroup symposia, 8 spe- cial sessions, virtual exhibits, the BPS Lecture, the President’s Symposium on Building an Inclusive BPS, and more during the Annual Meeting February 22–26, 2021. We are excited about the excellent science and outstanding speakers, and hope you’ll join us for the meeting! Council met virtually on Thursday, November 5 and Saturday, November 7. We kicked off their discussions with an overview of the 2021 Annual Meeting virtual format. Program Chairs for 2021, Patricia Bassereau and Bertrand Garcia-Moreno , and 2022, Elizabeth Komives and Art Palmer , provided updates on their collaborative efforts regarding speakers and content for both meetings. Lukas Tamm , Thematic Meetings Committee Chair, and Suzanne Scarlata , BPS Conference Committee Chair, shared proposals for new events with Council. One of the challeng- es for these programs is the fact that all four of BPS’s 2020 small meetings were rescheduled due to the pandemic, and 2021 small meetings will likely be impacted as well. Council approved two proposals for new events, and the committee chairs and staff will work with all Thematic Meeting and BPS Conference organizers to ensure events are scheduled or rescheduled in order to provide safe and meaningful experi- ences for all involved. Council received proposals for two new Subgroups. Both were tentatively approved, and we look forward to announcing them in the next issue of the BPS Bulletin .

— Catherine A. Royer — Jennifer Pesanelli

December 2020

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