Biophysical Society Bulletin | February 2021

President’s Message

President’s Message

Also note that if you do not plan to attend the entire BPS meeting, anyone in the world can attend the President’s Sym- posuim: Building an Inclusive Biophysical Society, followed by the 2021 Awards Ceremony and the Society Lecture, given by Eva Nogales of University of California Berkeley. These events will be held on the last day of the meeting, from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm USA Eastern on Friday, February 26, 2021. Information about the full program can be found on the Society website. One of the issues that I have tried to highlight during my pres- idency is the importance of Biophysical Journal to the Society’s strategic goals (sharing knowledge about biophysics, pro- moting biophysics, fostering a global community, advocating for biophysics). The journal is also extremely important to the Society financially, bringing in about one-third of the Society’s revenues that are then used in member services programs and activities.

It is New Year’s Eve as I write my last BPS Bulletin column as President of the Society. Looking back over the nearly one year since I took up the gavel, I can’t help but think how lucky the Society was to be able to hold the 2020 meeting in person. How innocent we were then! Only three weeks after the

Catherine A. Royer with Past-President David W. Piston

meeting much of the country was in lockdown, and 2020 be- gan in earnest its long horrendous slog through the pandemic. The Spring meeting of Council, usually held at the President’s institution, had to go virtual, as did the fall meeting, usually held at the BPS offices near Washington, DC. The gavel does not lend itself to Zoom. But in fact, there was no need for gaveling. Council really pulled together this year as we had to make really difficult decisions, the hardest of which was to move the 2021 meeting online. Society staff have been incredible during the year as well, switching apparently seam- lessly to working from home and on-line. Honestly, I could not tell the difference. Moving the meeting online took an all- hands-on-deck effort, and I am truly grateful for all the hard work by Society staff and the Program Committee in pulling this together. All aspects of BPS functions have been impacted by the pandemic, of course. Our finances have taken the triple hit of having to pay cancellation fees for the 2021 meeting venue, the added cost of contracting with various new vendors to hold the upcoming online meeting, and the loss of revenue from membership dues —most BPS members renew their membership when they register for the meeting. While the online meeting has attracted more registrants so far than we anticipated, we still are low in membership renewals. Over the years BPS Council had built up financial reserves for a contin- gency such as this (natural disasters, cyber or terror attack). It turned out to be a global pandemic. Thankfully the reserves will help get us through this, but still Society finances have suffered quite a bit. So I am asking you to do two things right now to help the So- ciety: (1) If you have not registered for the 2021 virtual Annual Meeting it is not too late to do so. Note that the Program Committee has put together an impressive program with plenty of talks, posters, career and other panels, as well as chat rooms to meet up with colleagues; and (2) Even if you do not plan to attend the meeting, renew your Society member- ship! Biophysics needs you now more than ever.

From left, Frances Separovic, Cathy Royer, Angela Gronenborn, and Suzanne Scarlata.

So there is one more thing I will ask you to do for BPS before I leave the presidency. Submit at least one manuscript to BJ every year. The journal exists for you to highlight your work and share it with your colleagues. One manuscript per year from all BPS PI’s would elevate the journal and in addition to making the journal stronger, your contributions will directly benefit BPS. I hope to “see” many of you during the 2021 online meeting in February, when I will turn over the gavel to Frances Separovic , our incoming President. Looking forward to an in-person meeting in San Francisco in 2022, I think we can all celebrate the crucial role of science in bringing us an ever-increasing number of safe and effective vaccines to beat down this virus. This feat of the scientific community was built on a lot of ex- cellent biophysics over the years, including protein structure and dynamics, RNA physical chemistry, physical chemistry of lipids, and the biophysics of the immune response. Without

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