Biophysical Society Bulletin | July/August 2020

July/August 2020

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Message From the 2021 Annual Meeting ProgramChairs We were freshly back from our meeting in San Diego when we put the final touches on the program for the 2021 Annual Meeting. Basking still in the science and in the energy and excitement of our meeting in San Diego, we were incapable of imagining the magnitude of the dislocation the world was about to experience. Even after we began to shelter at home, we continued to work on the program with the hope that we would meet in person in February 2021.

Patricia Bassereau

Bertrand García-Moreno

The extraordinary times we are living through have taken us back to core questions about what we do, what we value, and why. Locked out of our labs and classrooms, with seminars and meetings cancelled, and unable to engage in daily in-person exchange with colleagues young and old, we envisioned what it would be like to meet again in person: the camaraderie, the inspiration, and the joy of face-to-face interactions. The pandemic has brought into focus the central role of human interactions in science, and that of science in society. We were looking forward to conversations about biophysics as the informing biological discipline of the 21st century, about our re- sponsibility to ensure a loud voice for science in policy and government, and about the need to restate the sanctity of scientific data, facts, and truth. United as the world was for a moment under the common threat of an invisible enemy, we envisioned a meeting that was to be a truly international celebration of biophysics. Alas, that is not to be. For public health reasons, but also for practical ones, we will not meet in Boston in February.

President’s Message Biophysicist in Profile Inside

The 2021 meeting will proceed virtually. With your input, we are working on a program that will still deliver the quality science you expect at a BPS meeting. In addition, we will find ways to bring people together for targeted discussions of pressing science and for informal discussions that keep our community vibrant and engaged. Nothing will replace the chance encounters in the hallways and at the poster sessions, the cross-generational dinners, meeting new friends and getting reacquainted with old ones, or hearing about your work in person, but we will figure out how to strengthen the ties that hold our community together, and how to welcome our young colleagues who are the core of our meeting. We hope that some of you who would not otherwise have been able to attend the meeting will participate in this virtual event. Never has it been more important for everybody to join in our celebration of biophysics. We will be in touch to share our plans for a robust virtual meeting; meanwhile, stay optimistic, our in-person meeting will return in San Francisco in 2022. — Patricia Bassereau , 2021 Program Co-Chair — Bertrand García-Moreno , 2021 Program Co-Chair

2 4 6

Public Affairs Publications

10 12 13 15 16

Career Development

Member Corner

Subgroups

Upcoming Events

President’s Message

Report fromCouncil In keeping with BPS tradition, the

As a result of conversations at the BPS 2020 Annual Meeting, a subcommittee of individuals from the Early Careers Committee and the Committee for Professional Opportunities for Women came together to develop a proposal for a Family Care Grant Program. This programwould provide families with flexible financial assistance that can be applied to extra expenses incurred for dependent care during the Annual Meeting. BPS would provide these grants in lieu of onsite childcare, which has historically been underutilized relative to the expense. Council enthusiastically approved this program citing that it was a much more inclusive means of providing support to members. Subgroups rounded out the agenda for the first day of the Council meeting. The Subgroup Chairs expressed a concern about the BPS policy that substitute speakers for Annual Meet- ing symposia are on the precluded speaker list for two years and presented a proposal asking Council to reconsider the policy for substitute speakers. It was noted that this policy may make it more difficult to find willing volunteers in the event of a cancel- lation. Council debated the issue and ultimately agreed that the current policy makes BPS unique frommany other organiza- tions and helps ensure diversity of speakers by not allowing the same people to speak year after year, regardless if they are a substitute speaker. Council also entertained a proposal for a new Subgroup: the Multiscale Genome Organization Subgroup. Thomas Bishop and Tamar Schlick put forth the proposal, which included the required petition with signatures of 100 regular BPS members and draft bylaws. Council approved the proposal, welcoming the Multi- scale Genome Organization Subgroup as the 16th Subgroup in the Society. Read more about this new Subgroup, their aims and focus, on page 15 in this issue. The Friday Council Meeting agenda focused entirely on the BPS 2021 Annual Meeting. After much thoughtful discussion, Council concluded that maintaining the in-person meeting as planned for Boston in 2021 would not be reasonable in light of the uncertainties surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Though no one knows what the status of COVID-19 will be in February 2021, the top priority is the safety and well-being of members and attendees. Given this situation, Council opted to cancel the in-person meeting now in order to have sufficient time to develop virtual programming that would best meet the needs of Society members. Council did not make the decision to hold a virtual 2021 meeting lightly, as the Annual Meeting is such a high point in the life of the Society and its members. The Annual Meeting experience, getting together with colleagues and friends from around the globe to learn of new scientific advances, is unparalleled.

Spring Council meeting was originally scheduled to take place at the home city or institution of the BPS Presi- dent, in this case, Rensselaer Poly- technic Institute in Troy, New York. Unsurprisingly, due to COVID-19, the face-to-face meeting was cancelled, and, for the first time, BPS Council met virtually.

Catherine A. Royer

With the continued aims of increasing transparency, sharing information, and providing insights on Council activities to our membership, we are providing this summary of the Spring Council meeting, that took place Thursday, May 28 and Friday, May 29. The spring meeting typically centers on strategic items for the Society as opposed to the more operationally oriented Council meetings, which occur in the fall and in conjunction with the Annual Meeting. Focused on the BPS strategic goals of Fostering a Global Com- munity and Sharing Knowledge in and about Biophysics , Council agreed to fund a BPS Sponsored Lecturer at the European Biophysical Societies’ Association (EBSA) 13th Congress in Vi- enna, Austria, in July 2021. Council also agreed to provide poster awards at the EBSA meeting with Supporting the Next Genera- tion as a strategic priority. Acknowledging prior agreement to provide similar support to the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) for their 20th Congress, which has been rescheduled from October 2020 to October 2021, Council discussed identifying opportunities to provide support in Asia and Africa as well. In 2017, the Society leadership developed a five-year strategic plan. As part of this planning process, Council requested that all BPS Committees develop metrics for their activities and estab- lished a cycle on which to review the work of the Committees and their alignment with the strategic plan. There is a four-year rotation for Committee reviews, and this year the Early Ca- reers Committee and the Education Committee were reviewed. They provided comprehensive reports and metrics about their activities. Both committees facilitate numerous programs at the Annual Meeting, during Biophysics Week, and at other times during the year. While Council was generally very pleased by the work of the Committees, there was a request that all commit- tees consider how they are serving BPS members, what they are doing well, and what else they should be doing, especially in light of the pandemic and changing needs of members. There will be conversations with the committees over the summer months and changes to programming are anticipated.

July/August 2020

2

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

President’s Message

Officers President Catherine A. Royer President-Elect Frances Separovic Past-President David W. Piston Secretary Erin Sheets Treasurer Kalina Hristova Council Linda Columbus Michelle A. Digman

As we look forward to being able to come to- gether again in person in 2022, Council mem- bers and the Program Chairs for 2021 ( Patricia Bassereau and Bertrand Garcia-Moreno ) and 2022 ( Elizabeth Komives and Art Palmer ) have begun developing an engaging experience for the 2021 virtual meeting with outstanding scientific content. In order to develop the most exciting virtual program possible, one that would provide the most benefit to BPS members, a survey was sent by email to all members asking for input on programming. Subgroups and Committee Chairs were invited to send their thoughts as well, and a subcommittee was formed to work through the details. Updates will be forthcoming, and we look forward to providing an excellent Annual Meeting experience in 2021.

Whether discussing Committee programming, a new Subgroup, or the Annual Meeting, Council recognizes that the Biophysical Society is our members. Without you, there is no BPS, so we endeavor to provide you with programming, resources, and connections that are important to you. What can we do for you? Please reach out to the BPS office at society@biophysics.org or to me at royerc@rpi.edu with any suggestions or feedback as to howwe can best support you now and into the future.

Erin C. Dueber Marta Filizola Gilad Haran

— Catherine A. Royer — Jennifer Pesanelli

Francesca Marassi Joseph A. Mindell Carolyn A. Moores

Anna Moroni Jennifer Ross David Stokes Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede Biophysical Journal Jane Dyson Editor-in-Chief The Biophysicist Sam Safran Editor-in-Chief

Be Involved. The Biophysical Society (BPS) provides many opportunities for members to get involved and give back to the biophysics community.

Society Office Jennifer Pesanelli Executive Officer Newsletter Executive Editor Jennifer Pesanelli Managing Editor Beth Staehle

To learn more about the different opportunities, visit www.biophysics.org/get-involved.

Gain Leadership Experience. Make a Difference. Expand Your Network.

Production Catie Curry Ray Wolfe Proofreader/Copy Editor Laura Phelan The Biophysical Society Newsletter (ISSN 0006-3495) is published eleven times per year, January-December, by the Biophysical Society, 5515 Security Lane, Suite 1110, Rockville, Maryland 20852. Distributed to USA members and other countries at no cost. Cana- dian GST No. 898477062. Postmaster: Send address changes to Biophysical Society, 5515 Security Lane, Suite 1110, Rockville, MD 20852. Copyright © 2020 by the Biophysical Society. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

The Biophysical Society is grateful to its Industry Partners.

GOLD

SILVER

For Industry Partner Membership information, contact alevine@biophysics.org.

July/August 2020

3

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Biophysicist in Profile

Andrea Gohlke Areas of Research Biophysical study of protein-small molecule and protein-lipid interactions.

Institution AstraZeneca UK

At-a-Glance

Andrea Gohlke is a senior biophysicist in early stage oncology drug discovery at AstraZeneca in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She grew up in a small town called Uelzen, in northern Germany between Hamburg and Hannover. Her father was a mechanics teacher and her mother a shop assistant at a butcher shop. “My path to university was new to them, they would have rather liked me to earn an income directly after school,” she says, “but then they recognized that science was my passion and were very supportive. They are visiting me regularly abroad which is great.”

Andrea Gohlke

Andrea Gohlke’s favorite subjects in school were math and chemistry. “I liked working with numbers and learning things that were logically connected,” she explains. She graduated secondary school in 2001 and immediately began her under- graduate studies in Molecular Biotechnology and Molecular Life Science at the University of Luebeck, Germany. Her course of study was very interdisciplinary, exposing her to different fields including math, chemistry, biology, physics, informatics, and medicine. She obtained her bachelor of science degree in 2004, followed by a master of science in molecular life science in 2006 at the same university. “During my bachelor’s thesis – titled ‘Calculational Gene Localiza- tion of Dyslexia’ at the Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics, I focused on biometry and statistics, which I very much enjoyed. But I was missing the lab aspect, so during my master’s thesis, I started to explore the different areas of structural biology and ended up studying galactosyltransfer- ase-ligand interactions using NMR. It was then that I became fascinated with the study of molecular interactions and how to investigate them using physics,” she shares. She further focused in on biophysics during her PhD studies in the group of Roland Winter at the Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology. She explored a variety of methods there, including fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy, infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy, and surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy to study model membrane interactions of Ras and Amylin. This also got her interested in the assembly of model lipid membranes. “The application of different biophysical methods showed me how important it is to validate results but also that it is crucial to know the limitations of each method.” During this time she also had the opportunity to build up a cell lab from scratch, “to build up experiments studying the interaction of amyloids with cell membranes,” she says. Gohlke joined the Interna- tional Max Planck Research Schools program, where she had her first experience planning a conference.

One of Gohlke’s colleagues in Winter’s lab was Claus Czeslik . “We worked together on establishing new techniques in the lab (FCS, confocal microscopy, and IRRAS),” he says. “We also did some teaching activities together — supervising exams, practical trainings, and oral exams of students. Unfortunate- ly we are currently not working together, however we meet once in a while at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. Andrea is a very dedicated scientist, simultaneously she has a pronounced sense of humor, which makes working with her very enjoyable and fun.” In 2010 she started as a postdoc in the lab of Nobel laureate James Rothman at Yale University in the United States. “He received his Nobel prize while I was working for him, thus it was an exciting time,” Gohlke shares. There, she studied SNARE-mediated membrane fusion using biophysics. “My goal was to recreate the process in a model membrane system and study it with TIRF and confocal microscopy on a single vesicle level,” she says. “I developed a new protocol which integrates the t-SNAREs into freestanding bilayer and then studied liposomes containing v-SNAREs fusing to them.” After two and a half years, she began to find it difficult to be so far from her family. “Fortunately, my collaborator Frederic Pincet at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France, of- fered me the opportunity to continue my work in his lab while still being supported by James Rothman ,” she explains. “Over- all, it was a great experience. I had the chance to directly learn from Jim, who was very supportive and always seemed open to new ideas. He is certainly a person to look up to.” Her colleague in Pincet’s group, Yong Jian Wang , did not work with her on the same project, but both worked with SNARE proteins. “Andrea Gohlke has many excellent qualities,” he says. “The most memorable one is that she is willing to help others by providing her constructive ideas.”

July/August 2020

4

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Biophysicist in Profile

Following her first postdoc, she thought about how she wanted her career in biophysics to proceed. She was enjoying her academic life, full of new ideas and working on her own project. On the other hand, she longed for some job security and missed teamwork. She applied for a variety of biophyisi- cist positions and in the end was faced with a choice be- tween a postdoc at Imperial College, London, or a long-term contract working in drug discovery at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Scotland, UK. “I was not very familiar with the processes in drug discovery at the time. But as the profile fit right into my interests of studying protein-ligand interaction using biophysics (NMR, ITC, SPR), I decided to go for the position at Beatson as a senior biophysicist,” she says. “I discovered that biophysics is essential in early stage drug discovery and that its correct application is what makes or breaks projects. I also started a new workshop called ‘Know Your Method’ that was held at the Beatson Institute to talk about the right application of certain methods available in the Institute.” Gohlke now works as a senior biophysicist in early stage oncology drug discovery at AstraZeneca in Cambridge, United Kingdom. As is common within industry research, her projects are confidential, but range over a variety of oncology target classes. “In general, I am using quantitative biophysics (SPR, ITC, etc.) to study drug targets in oncology and their interac- tion with small molecules. This encompasses everything from exploring new drug targets and their mode of action, screen- ing for new initial small molecules, to working on lead series of drug molecules which then have the potential to be tested in the clinics. As I am working on several projects and target classes, each target exhibits its own challenges,” she shares. “I work in a very interdisciplinary environment, in direct con- tact with chemists, biochemists, and cell biologists. We are steadily consulting on how to proceed best with the projects, each of us bringing a different specialist point of view to the table which makes it very creative work. I am also getting more experience in project management and am supervis- ing students here at AstraZeneca which still lets me have a glimpse of the academic world.” In addition, she has recently been volunteering for three months at a COVID-19 screening facility as a data team lead helping to establish the facility and evaluating screening results. “ It has been an invaluable experience being on the forefront making a direct impact in patients’ lives,” she shares. When asked about some of the challenges she faced in her field, she shares, “Biophysics in drug discovery is sometimes seen as a straightforward approach making it look simple. But as with any method, it is important to familiarize yourself with the principles and limitations of each method thoroughly, as these are sometimes not accounted for when interpreting results. Through establishing a new workshop called ‘Biophysics in Drug Discovery – Not Just a Black Box’ I am trying to raise awareness and get users from industry and

academics talking about the technical implications when us- ing biophysical methods. Unfortunately, I had to cancel it due to the COVID-19 lockdown but hope to proceed with it again soon.”

Gohlke with her parents and uncle during a family visit to see her in Cambridge.

When she is not working, Gohlke enjoys traveling, exploring different cultures, enjoying good food with friends, and going swimming or taking a nice walk in the park with her husband. “I also very much enjoy music. I used to sing in a choir and play instruments, which I want to pick up again,” she shares. Going forward in her career, Gohlke hopes to use biophysics to advance drug discovery, and to contribute to developing novel methods exhibiting higher sensitivity, with the ability to measure in more physiological environments. “My advice to biophysicists just starting out in their careers would be that you should always ask for the things you want to achieve,” she says. “Do not wait for someone else to make these decisions for you. In addition, my advice would be to be proactive and honest, standing by your integrity and being respectful to others is essential for great science as much as it is in daily life.”

July/August 2020

5

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Public Affairs

Financial Crunch and Faculty Layoffs Continue Under Pandemic The pandemic continues to make its presence known in budgets at universities and colleges across the United States and beyond. As a result of the actions taken to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, schools have lost millions of dollars in revenue — and many expect further losses due to the uncertainly about whether the 2020 – 2021 school year can convene on campus this fall. To deal with this financial strain, many universities have started to reduce their workforces. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education , at least 48,086 employees (faculty and other staff) across 190 US institutions have been affected by a COVID-19 - related layoff, contract non-renewal, or furlough. Some institutions have had to permanently shutter their doors. The CARES Act, a $2 trillion stimulus bill passed in March by the US federal government to address the economic fallout of the pandemic, earmarked approximately $7 billion for higher education institutions to deal with pandemic-related losses and another $7 billion for affected students. However, the question remains whether it will be enough to help institutions avoid catastrophe.

Public Policy and the BPS Congressional Fellowship: The NewBattleground for Science There is a dichotomous nature to the relationship between the US Congress that sets public policy on science, research, and the funding that supports those endeavors and the scientists like you, who spend their days in the lab trying tomake breakthroughs and improvements to basic and biomedical research. However, as we have had to adjust all aspects of our lives over the past several months due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, we have seen the very tangible need for research scientists in public policy positions. Due to the nature of Congress, the limits on staffing mean each personmust develop expertise in a wide array of policy areas. When the scale of the pandemic was realized, scientific and medical fellows were in demand to provide briefings, explain the processes being used to find treatments and vaccines, and to of- fer their extensive expertise to not only the member of Congress they were working for, but for others with significant outbreaks in their district and state. The need for scientific expertise this year has put a spotlight on the work being done by fellowships such as the BPS Congressional Fellowship and the demand continues to grow.

For biophysicists interested in public policy, the BPS Congressio- nal Fellowship is an ideal opportunity to explore the innovation and breakthroughs you can bring to science and biophysics through the public policy arena. Applications for the 2021 – 2022 BPS Congressional Fellowship open on August 3, 2020. The BPS Congressional Fellowship Programprovides an invalu- able and unique opportunity for BPSmembers to gain practical experience and insights into public policy by working on Capitol Hill. The fellowship program sponsors one fellow annually to serve as a staff member in a Senate, House of Representatives, or Committee office. BPSmembers who have an interest science policy should consider this program as an ideal way to spend an academic sabbatical or leave of absence from a company. Read more about the Congressional Fellowship: https:/www.biophys- ics.org/policy-advocacy/congressional-fellowship. White House Looks to Increase Roadblocks for Chinese Grad Students’ and Researchers’ Visas Republican lawmakers and officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have been discussing bans on visas for Chinese students and researchers in STEM fields and those with ties to China’s military schools. In late May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump talked about plans to cancel visas for Chinese nationals who are already conducting research in the United

July/August 2020

6

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Public Affairs

States and who have ties to universities affiliated with China’s military—a policy that would affect some 3,000 students. The goal is to limit foreign involvement in research, as investi- gations into ties between US and Chinese researchers have led a number of scientists in recent years to lose their jobs or to be arrested. Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the SECURE CAMPUS Act, which would ban visas for Chinese nationals to come to the United States and complete graduate programs or postdocs in STEM fields. Administration officials and lawmakers say the move is to shore up national security threats, but university professors argue such cancellations represent targeted discrimination. The Adminis- tration is also considering restrictions on the Optional Practical Training program, which lets international students who are in the United States on student visas stay for one year after they grad- uate to work in the field they studied. China’s Thousand Talents initiative, which has provided funding for American researchers, is also a program government officials are urging universities to keep a close eye on or even cut ties with. University officials note that banning Chinese nationals who participate in research could slow scientific progress and result in untoward economic consequences. The 360,000 Chinese nationals who come to the United States for graduate studies or postdocs contribute about $14 billion to academic institutions, largely from tuition and other fees. As part of our goal to foster a global biophysics community, we asked the BPS Ambassadors to share the issues, con- cerns, and activities of the biophysical community in their country. As scientific research continues to find a way to progress under varying COVID-19 restrictions, maintaining an open and ongoing dialogue within the community is essential. These articles were written in June. Nuno C. Santos , BPS Ambassor, Portugal Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa From the middle of March until the 5th of May, the Insti- tute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) was open just for doing COVID-19 diagnosis to support our national services (Portu- gal being among the countries with the highest number of tests normalized for the size of the population), animal and cell culture maintenance, virus isolation on BSL3, and a few more SARS-CoV-2-related research activities. All the class- es at the Medical School of the University of Lisbon, where I teach, were shifted to videoconference and other web-based resources. My wife, our two sons, and I were all working and having classes from home, often with the four of us simulta- neously having four different videoconferences, in four differ- ent rooms, and on four different computers. Unfortunately, Around theWorld BPS Ambassador Updates

things are not so easy for those who cannot work from home or those who do not have computers and rooms for everyone in the family. On the 6th of May, iMM reopened for all research activities, with a maximum of one-third of the people in the building, a maximum number of people per room and lab, and manda- tory use of face masks. In each research group, we organized ourselves to work in shifts, including nights and weekends, taking into consideration the childcare limitations that some parents were facing. At the beginning of last week [June], the limit was increased to half of the people in the building, instead of one-third, maintaining the same maximum num- ber of people per room and lab, and mandatory use of face masks. Things are reopening smoothly and, so far, no one got infected! Everyone is undergoing SARS-CoV-2 infection and serologic testing. COVID-19 tests for the national services did not stop. We are now hiring new staff to do that work, as the researchers that were doing the tests are going back to their original projects. The academic year at the University of Lisbon is approaching its end and has continued all the classes and final evaluations online. Seminars and lab meetings are also still being held online. At the national level, only students in grades 11 and 12 went back to school, in order for all students to be able to prepare for university application, regardless of their home conditions. They are doing so wearing masks, are organized by shifts, and are in rooms re-arranged to maximize the distance between students. Nurseries, kindergartens, and preschools also reopened, mostly to allow parents to return to their jobs (in Portugal, both parents usually have full-time jobs). However, students from grades 1 to 10 are still having all their classes online. Children from grades 1 to 9 are also receiving daily support classes through national TV. In a country with a population of 10.3 million, Portugal has a total of 34,885 cases of COVID-19 at the time of this writing, which led to 1,485 deaths. In the last 24 hours we had 6 new deaths and 192 new cases of infection. Of course, I would like it if all these numbers were lower but, compared with several other countries worldwide, and considering the abnormally high average age of the Portuguese population, we know that it could have been considerably worse. Contributing to this less negative scenario was the fact that scientists from differ- ent disciplines, from medicine and biology, to mathematics and social sciences, had a unique opportunity to share their message. Contrary to other countries, both politicians and most of the general public made their political and personal decisions on how to deal with the pandemic based on that scientific information. That made all the difference. John Baezinger , BPS Ambassador, Canada University of Ottawa Throughout my years of being a member and past President of the Biophysical Society of Canada (BSC), I have focused on promoting the next generation of biophysicists and advocat- ing for scientific research. As with most scientific endeavors, the activities of the BSC and its members have slowed dra- matically in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

July/August 2020

7

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Public Affairs

As most universities closed their research and teaching facili- ties in March, with staff transitioning to work from home and classes moving to on-line formats, BSC had to postpone its Annual Meeting until 2021. In the meantime, members of the BSC have used this down time to focus additional efforts on science advocacy. Many Canadian biophysicists do not feel that biophysics is appro- priately represented among the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) review panels, and that biophysics-related research is undervalued. In comparison, the NIH has two biophysics-related study sections: the Biochemistry and Biophysics of Membranes Study Section (BBM) and the Bio- physics of Neural Systems Study Section (BPNS), as well as a biophysics panel under the National Institute of General Med- ical Sciences. Members of the BSC have initiated a process to lobby the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to create a biophysics-focused review panel at CIHR, possibly with a mandate similar to a combination of the two noted above. As a first step, we are asking biophysics-focused researchers in Canada who are interested in such a review panel to fill out the form found at https:/ tinyurl.com/cihrreviewpanel. The collected information will be used to gage interest and to define the mandate of a putative review panel. If there is sufficient interest, members of the BSC will recruit support from other Canadian scientific societies and will then initiate contact with CIHR representatives. On a more positive note, as a result of the steady decline in the number of COVID-19 cases in Canada, universities are be- ginning to open up their research facilities leading to a gradual restart of research activities. With effective social distancing policies in place at each university and research institute, our members hope that they will be able to return to full research activities in the coming months, and that the annual BSC meeting will take place in person one year from now. Samrat Mukhopadhyay , BPS Ambassador, India Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali The still-unfolding COVID-19 pandemic is changing our lives in a very big way during these unusual, unprecedented, and topsy-turvy times. The challenges in career transition of young researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic is extraor- dinary and I have been asking how we can best address this issue. Hopefully, this is just a blip and something we can move past soon. When I last wrote in the March BPS Blog, the number of confirmed cases was 150 in India, and now the number of cases is more than 330,000. The total number is now over 8 million worldwide according to the data from Johns Hopkins University. The silver lining is that the worst of the crisis is now behind some of the countries and regions. This pandemic has caused widespread distress and damage in nearly every aspect of our lives and has led some sections of our society to reach an ominous cliff. While it is an arduous task to recuperate the losses, and some of these can possibly never be recovered, the world has come together reconciling differences to fight this battle that will need to be fought continuously for the months and years to come.

Here, I would like to address a specific problem that is of the utmost importance to our scientific enterprise. As I men- tioned in my Blog post, this is a very challenging period for the younger researchers who are in transition. Their career transition is currently gridlocked, especially when the timeline for rolling back the restrictions is uncertain. Some of them are stuck in between their transition from (graduating) PhD to postdoctoral position and from postdoctoral position to their independent faculty jobs or other jobs, especially when there is a hiring freeze at many institutions, organizations, and companies across the globe. It is undoubtedly very frustrat- ing for the young, talented, productive researchers to wait for several months to a year to start in their new positions, change their geographical locations often involving overseas travel, and in some cases, waiting to apply for their visas. This serious issue of career calamity and its potential impact has recently been described by Chris Woolston in his Nature article “Junior Researchers Hit by Coronavirus-triggered Hiring Freezes.” During these unusual times, the established aca- demics and close-knit scientific communities perhaps have a lot to contribute. There is a pressing need to recalibrate our expectations, tamp down our academic aspirations, reset out priorities, and support the junior researchers at their existing institutions during the pandemic period. This can be achieved through a coordinated effort at various levels. Below I summarize some of my thoughts on how we can help junior scientists during this pandemic period. Advisors and mentors: As advisors, we can consider extend- ing our support to the graduating and graduated students and postdocs. If possible, the researchers can be reappointed for the next few months to a year until they are able to find their new positions and travel to their new job locations. Of course, this is possible if the PIs have their grants. Institutions: In case the PIs grants have phased out, univer- sities, institutes, and organizations can extend their support in reappointing the students and postdocs for the next few months. Nearly all institutions have their endowment and corpus funds, and maybe this is the time when the institu- tions can use a part of these funds for supporting the junior researchers perhaps by cutting down other recurring costs. In all likelihood, these bridging fellowships may not be very significant in the grand scheme of their annual budgets. Professional societies: Normally, the professional societies do not support research fellowships, with some exceptions. Some of these societies can now try and help junior research- ers during the pandemic period. The societies can consider providing the subsistence cost that is commensurate with the cost of living in the researcher’s country or region. This can be achieved through competition and by using a set of selection criteria. This support will immensely help the young research- ers who are currently stuck at their current institutions. If necessary, the societies can reach out to their members, who have permanent faculty appointments, for voluntary dona- tions towards these bridging fellowships. The junior research- ers are our next-generation scientists and academic leaders, and therefore, we must get together to support them during these unusual times.

July/August 2020

8

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Call for Applications Editor in Chief of Biophysical Reports The Biophysical Society is launching a new open access journal Biophysical Reports to support the Society’s strategic goals: • Sharing Knowledge in and About Biophysics • Fostering a Global Community • Supporting the Next Generation We are looking for an Editor-in-Chief to lead this exciting initiative. Biophysical Reports will publish Letters and Reports for rapid publication, which can be written for specialists or general audiences. Full-length scholarly articles will also be welcome, including those that report new methods or technologies that are ready for biological applications. The Journal will complement Biophysical Journal , while providing a vehicle for shorter articles with rapid turnaround and an outlet for biophysicists who prefer or are required to publish in a fully open access journal. The two Journals will coordinate possible article transfers. Biophysical Reports will publish the highest quality original research in all aspects of biophysics, from the molecular to whole-organism levels. The Editor-in-Chief should embody the scientific standards of the Society and support its mission. This appoint- ment will begin January 1, 2021, for one five-year term. We believe this is an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of biophysics and to launch a high-quality open access publication. The Editor-in-Chief will: • Establish the structure of the editorial board. • Build and lead the editorial team, in conjunction with the Publications Committee and staff. • Develop the process for rapid review and publication of Letters and Reports. • Recruit exciting manuscripts through attendance at global conferences and scientific meetings. • Work with the Society office staff on the day-to-day editorial management. • Collaborate with staff and the Society’s publishing partner, Cell Press, on effective workflows, journal website features, marketing, and social media promotion of the journal. You will have: • broad interest across the full spectrum of biophysics, • project and/or people management skills, • strong organizational skills, • strong written and oral communication skills, • interest in engaging with the scientific community. The Publications Committee welcomes applications from candidates who support and are dedicated to the Society’s values. There are no restrictions on scientific interests, background, gender, race or ethnicity, or geography. To apply, please submit a cover letter outlining the motivations for your interest. We will also accept nominations. We will consider applications until August 1, 2020 . Confidential applications should be made to the Publications Committee through the Society office (eicBR@biophysics.org).

Publications

Know the Editor Jeremiah Zartman

such as those of fruit flies. Reverse-engineering complex multicellular systems requires constantly keeping up with the latest tools and developments in a broad range of disciplines, which I find stimulating and challenging. This reinforces my conviction that cross-talk between multiple disciplines is needed to discover the general design principles of multicellu- lar systems. How do you stay on top of all the latest developments in your field? Last summer, as a part of a scheduled sabbatical, I partici- pated in the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics’ Program “Morphogenesis in Animals and Plants: Search for Principles,” held by the University of California at Santa Barbara from July 22 to August 23, 2019. I was able to make new connections and rub shoulders with many of the leaders in the field of morphogenesis. Both the similarities and differences on how size and shape are regulated in plants and animals fascinate me. Additionally, I enjoyed the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society. There, I branched out to attend many sessions outside my own research discipline. This provided me with new perspectives and inspiration.

University of Notre Dame Editor, Systems Biophysics Biophysical Journal

Jeremiah Zartman

What are you currently working on that excites you? I am excited about reverse-engineering how cells integrate multimodal signals — chemical, mechanical, and bioelectri- cal — across spatial and temporal scales. We are trying to better understand how the dynamics of second messengers such as Ca2+ are involved in information flow and process- ing and how chemical-based information is translated into mechanical forces. I am fascinated by how individual cells process both intrinsic and extrinsic cues that lead to emer- gent tissue-level responses, such as size control. We have been investigating this question using genetic model systems

In the last five years there has been an explosion of interest in phase separation as an organizing principle in signal transduction, nuclear organization, and chromatin structure. Phase separation and generalizations thereof are governed by multivalence of interaction motifs and/or domains within protein and nucleic acids, especially RNA molecules. We are inviting contributions that treat any aspect of the relevance of phase separation to biology. These could include new experimental results, critical reviews of the state of the field, guides to the design and interpretation of experiments, explorations of the basic principles underlying phase separation, qualitative and quantitative explorations of the consequences of phase separation for biology, or historical perspectives on the development of current models. Special Issue: Phase Separation in Nucleic Acid Biochemistry and Signal Transduction Biophysical Journal Editors: Jason Kahn, University of Maryland, College Park Rohit Pappu, Washington University in St. Louis Edward Lemke, Johannes Gutenberg University and Institute of Molecular Biology Mainz Call for Papers

Deadline for submission: August 31, 2020

To submit, visit biophysj.msubmit.net

July/August 2020

10

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Publications

NewBJ Article Collection Mechanobiology A new collection of articles from Biophysical Journal has been released at https:/www.cell.com/biophysj/home. These articles highlight the cross-kingdom importance of mech- anobiology, spanning shape evolution in plant organs and migration of single mammalian cells. The selected papers signify advances in understanding cancer cell survivability, mechanosensitivity of cell-cell and cell-substrate adhesion, the influence of constraint on cellular alignment and motility, and novel modes of mechanotransduction. Curated by Editor Vivek Shenoy , this collection is a must read for those who want to learn how theory and modeling are at the forefront of this exciting field, shaping comprehension of new mechanisms as they emerge. EUModel Grant Agreement The European Union (EU) Model Grant Agreement details the process and requirements for requesting and receiving grant funding from the EU long-term budget. The current version runs until the end of 2020 and a new version is under discus- sion. Currently, all publication outputs funded by the EU should be made available as Gold Open Access, where the article is free- ly available after the payment of an Article Publishing Charge; or as Green Open Access, where the article is freely available after an embargo period of 6 to 12 months (dependent on the discipline). Publication through hybrid subscription journals (such as Biophysical Journal ) is permitted through these routes. The EU is proposing changes beginning with 2021 which would require all research outputs be made freely available with a zero embargo period and publication of articles in a hybrid journal would be prohibited, or the author would have to self-fund publication in these journals. With the benefits of Open Access come concerns for authors, professional societies, and the scientific community, such as limitations on author freedom, limitations on author and user experience, decline in submissions, sustainability, and integri- ty risk. These changes would affect Society journals and BPS will be following the situation closely.

S E E WHAT Y OU ’ V E B E E N M I S S I NG

HAMAMATSUCAMERAS.COM

July/August 2020

11

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y

Career Development

Personal Perspectives on Surviving in a ChangingWorld “The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” — Eric Hoffer , American philosopher in Reflections on the Human Condition, 1973. questions without fear since they were new to the topic or scenario and still learning the ropes of how things work. For example, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was not a trained biologist, but a cloth merchant, and in order to look at the finer details of the cloth he used lenses to magnify the fibers to check their quality. That led him to build microscopes and that led to observations of microscopic life. Closer to home is the inspir- ing story of Margaret Dayhoff. Trained as a chemist, she was able to harness the post-WWII computing facilities to make the first database of protein sequences. At the same time, she was able to apply the same computing knowledge to as- tronomy in collaboration with spectroscopists Ellis Lippincott and Carl Sagan .

The above quote resonated with me and spoke to my personal journey of how I survived in an ever-changing world. Hoffer talks about an important skill: lifelong learning. Change can arise in many different circumstances. For some, change could be in their work- place environment or lab dynamics, or it could be moving to a lab where new skills need to be acquired. For others, it

The techniques you learn in your graduate school career do come in handy. For instance, it might be possible to apply a modified version of a particular technique to a new prob- lem. For example, for my PhD, I was trained to learn the skills required for understanding small molecules. During my postdoctoral research, I had moved to another field and was considered an “outsider.” My work was on protein thermo- stability and how we can make a mesostable protein into a thermostable one. I took a step back and asked if we know what makes a protein thermostable to begin with. It looked like we didn’t, especially for the family of proteins we were studying. The techniques that I previously learned in order to understand small molecule binding (solvent accessibility, specificity, etc.) could be applied to study proteins as well. It never occurred to me that it could be that simple! There is no one single “rule” when it comes to adapting to an ever-changing world. Keeping up to date with the latest re- search, the latest products launched by industry, and making new contacts at conferences are some of the things you can do to prepare yourself. Depending on your area of research, these things may vary. Additionally, there could be a need to focus on what the missions and visions are of your communi- ty of researchers. One always goes to the unknown from the known, but the challenge of making the unknown into the known is never letting go of the skill of lifelong learning. — Molly Cule

could be personal. Here, I will discuss how curiosity and life- long learning can help to cope with changes that are happen- ing in science and the world. From early school to university, we are ingrained with lifelong learning skills day-in and day-out, without realizing it explic- itly. At every stage, we are bombarded with new concepts, new abilities, and new techniques with the latter being more evident at the graduate student level. Usually, your mentor will have advised you to master multiple wet-lab and dry-lab techniques during your graduate life so that a specialized skillset becomes a valuable asset when looking for the next career move. Thus, you are employable. As a biophysicist, you have realized by now that compared to 50 years ago, science is moving as fast as a bullet train. A technique or method that was considered the “in“ thing or buzzword a couple of years ago has now become a routine lab exercise or assignment. In such a scenario, a soft skill that helps is to have a curiosity for learning and a questioning mind. Graduate school trains you to ask the right questions, rather than find the right answers. Scientific discoveries are peppered with instances of an “outsider” bringing a new perspective that was not looked at by others. This was possible because the “outsider” could ask

Numbers By the

Since the beginning of 2020, BPS has added support to more than 17 letters to federal legislators and agency officials on topics ranging from fiscal year 2021 appropriations, emergency pandemic funding, anti-Asian discrimination, and immigration legislation.

July/August 2020

12

T H E N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E B I O P H Y S I C A L S O C I E T Y