Biophysical Society Bulletin | July/August 2023

Council Update

Officers President Taekjip Ha President-Elect Gabriela Popescu Past-President Gail Robertson Secretary Teresa Giraldez Treasurer Samantha Harris Council Patricia Bassereau Margaret Cheung Henry Colecraft Martin Gruebele Kumiko Hayashi Syma Khalid Susan Marqusee Emmanuel Margeat Elizabeth Rhoades

Allowing platform speakers to also share their work with a poster will enhance scientific exchange and provide presenters with anoth er opportunity for engagement. Speaking of engagement, we voted unanimously to bring back the dance social after the BPS Lecture at the Annual Meeting, so brush up on your moves and plan to join us on the dance floor in Philly! Subgroup performance was another topic of discussion for us at Spring Council. Many of our Subgroups are thriving, but some are chal lenged with declining membership numbers and sponsorship. As Subgroups are the life blood of BPS and reflect areas of interest for our members, we want to ensure that we are responsive to emerging needs while support ing Subgroups in a sustainable way. To that end, we will uphold the bylaws of Subgroups and BPS by enforcing minimum membership requirements and will continue to consider other thresholds for performance as indicated by the Subgroup report card. BPS Society Awards remain a regular agenda item for Council. The 2024 awards nomi nations statistics provided the backdrop for our continuing conversation of increasing diversity and increasing numbers in awards nominations. The new self-nomination option for this most recent cycle did result in a few

more nominations than last year but had no measurable impact on diversity. While we’ll continue this experiment and look for other ways to address diversity and nominations moving forward, we also initiated a President’s New Awards Task Force to explore wheth er additional awards might better serve our membership. That group will convene over the summer and will report out in the fall. We closed our spring meeting with a Council self-evaluation exercise. Having spent the majority of the day examining progress on the Strategic Plan and adjusting or affirming actions accordingly, it was good to take a mo ment to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we are practicing principles of good gover nance, consider how we are doing in terms of oversight and direction setting, and examine our decision effectiveness. The exercise gave us the opportunity to reflect and identify challenges and opportunities for improvement as we work to realize the mission and vision of BPS. As always, we welcome your feedback on this update and all things biophysics. Please reach out to us at tjha@jhu.edu and jpesanelli@ biophysics.org. — Taekjip Ha , President — Jennifer Pesanelli , Executive Officer

Kandice Tanner Valeria Vasquez Jing Xu Biophysical Journal Vasanthi Jayaraman Editor-in-Chief The Biophysicist Sam Safran Editor-in-Chief Biophysical Reports

Jörg Enderlein Editor-in-Chief

Society Office Jennifer Pesanelli Executive Officer Newsletter

Executive Editor Jennifer Pesanelli Managing Editor John Long Production Ray Wolfe Meredith Zimmerman Proofreader/Copy Editor 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 © 2023 by the Biophysical Society. Darren Early Laura Phelan

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July/August 2023

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