Biophysical Society Bulletin | June 2019

June 2019

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2019 BPS Elections NowOpen Voting Period June 1 through August 1

The Society is pleased to announce the 2019 slate of candidates for President-Elect and Council. The two candidates for President-Elect are Jonathon Howard of Yale University and Frances Separovic of the University of Melbourne. The President-Elect will serve a one-year term, beginning February 2020, followed by a year as President, starting February 2021, and one subsequent year term as Past-President, beginning in February 2022. This year’s slate includes nine candidates for Council, shown below. The four members who are elected will each serve a three-year term beginning on February 18, 2020. Jonathon Howard Frances Separovic

Learn about the Nominating Committee on Page 13

Inside President’s Message Biophysicist in Profile

Erin C. Dueber

Alemayehu A. Gorfe Gyorgy Hajnoczky

Gilad Haran

Kumiko Hayashi

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Public Affairs and Outreach

Member Corner & Important Dates

Student Spotlight Career Development

Masahide Kikkawa

Francesca M. Marassi

Christopher W. Mathes Carolyn A. Moores

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Visit www.biophysics.org for full biographical information and candidate statements. All regular Society members with 2019 dues paid by May 31, 2019, are eligible to vote. Eligible members may vote electronically through August 1, 2019, by means of the secure site found at www.biophysics.org. The Society is indebted to the Nominating Committee, which developed the slate. The committee members were Jane Clarke , Chair, Zev Bryant , Ruth Heidelberger , Christopher Yip , Art Palmer , and Lukas Tamm .

Grants and Opportunities

Communities BPS Meetings

Upcoming Events

Read Candidate Statements at biophysics.org/election

VOTE

Voting Open Until August 1, 2019

President’s Message

The Importance of Biophysical Journal to the Society and to the Field of Biophysics The first goal of the Biophysical

science fair awards, the BPS Bulletin , student chapters, the International Ambassador Program, webinars, job board, net- working events, Biophysics Week activities, the video library, and many other features of membership. The Biophysical Journal is important to the budget of the Society, and also to the profession and field of biophysics as a whole. However, BJ is struggling with a decreasing number of submissions, with fewer than half the number of submissions that we received 10 years ago. If this drop in submissions continues, BJ will die, which would be a major loss to the field of biophysics! At the same time, the Society would need to find other sources of revenue or shut down programs. When asked why they do not submit papers to BJ, our members mention its low impact factor as a major reason. Because of its broad topical coverage, the nature of many articles, and the high acceptance rate, Biophysical Journal is not going to be a high impact factor publication. For example, some papers describe a new instrument: It is unlikely that many other groups could duplicate the instrument, apply it to their biological questions, and publish novel results within the two-year window measured by the impact factor. Addi- tionally, some fields of biophysics require long-term exper- iments that do not lend themselves to rapid advances, but are important nonetheless. Those fields are often shut out of trendy journals that are focused on maintaining their impact factor. These issues are borne out by data, which show a longer article citation half-life for BJ than for the high impact factor magazines, but those data are not reflected in the im- pact factor. It is also important to understand that the impact of any given paper is essentially independent of a journal’s impact factor, but this point appears to be lost by administra- tors and many scientists. We know that it would be straight forward to raise the impact factor of BJ significantly, for in- stance by reducing the acceptance rate to the 10–20 percent range. However, surveys of the owners of BJ, our members, have consistently shown a preference for keeping a higher acceptance rate that allows all members an opportunity to publish their best work in BJ. Of course, the impact factor is not the only reason that sub- missions are declining. The proliferation of “baby” journals sprouting from the magazines with easy transfer inclusive of the previous reviews has proven effective in keeping manu- scripts that are rejected from the top impact factor journals from finding their way into Biophysical Journal or other society journals. These and other issues have led to the formation of the Scientific Society Publisher Alliance (byscientistsfor- science.org) to promote publishing in society-owned journals.

Society is not surprisingly “Sharing knowledge in and about biophysics.” This goal is accomplished through the Annual Meeting and smaller meetings throughout the year, as well as through outreach such as Biophysics Week. However, the

David. W. Piston

permanent record of biophysical knowledge is shared through the pages of the Biophysical Journal (BJ), which is owned and operated by the Society for the benefit of our members and the field. BJ exists to serve our member, author, and read- er communities by (1) setting high standards (all decisions are made by editors who are practicing scientists, and who choose peer-reviewers who are experts in the field), (2) pro- viding an outlet for a broad swath of our members’ research whether it is currently trendy or not (the average acceptance rate for research manuscripts is ~40%), and (3) keeping costs affordable (an average paper from a member is published for less than $900). The first two points are critical for the field as the Biophysical Journal has served as the major archival record for state-of-the-art biophysical research for almost 60 years. Society journals have a long history of promoting scholarship while also generating income that supports society programs. Although the Biophysical Society owns the Biophysical Journal and controls every aspect of its content, we found that we could not afford self-publishing without significantly raising page charges. About 10 years ago, the Society contracted with Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier, to publish and distrib- ute BJ. Although BJ is published by a commercial publisher, it is a not-for-profit publication, and income that comes back to the Society is reinvested in our programs. This income is important for BJ’s continued mission as the standard bearer for biophysics research, and also for the Society to keep dues and meeting registration fees as low as possible. The Society has three main sources of revenue: dues, income from the Annual Meeting, and income from Biophysical Journal . While the absolute amounts of these fluctuate over time, they are comparable so that each supports about one-third of the Society’s annual budget. Much of the society’s expenses are related to BJ and the Annual Meeting, but both of these aim to operate in the black and thus, support our other member services. Without the funds from publications and meetings we would be forced to make hard choices in cutting support for Public Affairs, Education, Diversity and Inclusion, Early Careers and Professional Opportunities for Women Commit- tees, as well as subgroups, thematic meetings, travel awards,

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President’s Message

Officers President

David W. Piston President-Elect Catherine Royer Past-President Angela Gronenborn Secretary Frances Separovic Treasurer Kalina Hristova Council Zev Bryant Linda Columbus Michelle A. Digman Marta Filizola Teresa Giraldez Ruben Gonzalez, Jr. Joseph A. Mindell Anna Moroni Marina Ramirez-Alvarado Jennifer Ross David Stokes Pernilla Wittung-Stafeshede Biophysical Journal Jane Dyson Editor-in-Chief The Biophysicist Sam Safran Editor-in-Chief

While the Biophysical Society is still working towards joining SSPA, we are fully supportive of its members and objectives. There are many reasons to submit your work to the Biophysical Journal . It publishes out- standing biophysical research. It is led by a dedicated team of practicing scientists, some of whom undoubtedly work in your field. The editorial board reports to the Society and works with authors to ensure rigor and clarity in each publication. Unlike professional editors, our editors are also authors, and they understand the scientific and personal issues that can be involved in each submission.

In this column, I have highlighted an additional reason to submit to BJ, which is to ensure the availability of the broad and effective sup- port for career development, networking, and advocacy that Biophysical Society members have come to expect. The success of these services has been a major draw for me over the years, and I think this is the case for most of our members. These member services are important, but they are not inexpensive. For all these reasons, it is critical to the field and for the Society to have a strong journal, and I hope you will join me in submitting your work to the Biophysical Journal .

Special Issue: Membrane Protein Signaling Editors: Andrew Plested and Vasanthi Jayaraman Call for Papers The Journal welcomes submissions that report on biophysics of membrane protein signaling, with emphasis on the structure and dynamics of channels, transporters, and receptors. Physiological signaling, model systems and sensory biology are of particular interest. Biophysical Journal

Society Office Jennifer Pesanelli Executive Officer Newsletter

Executive Editor Jennifer Pesanelli Managing Editor Beth Staehle Contributing Writers and Proofreaders Dorothy Chaconas Laura Phelan

Deadline for submission: July 1, 2019

Call for Papers

Caitlin Simpson Elizabeth Vuong

Special Issue: Multiscale Modeling of Chromatin Editors: Tamar Schlick and Special Guest Editors Thomas Bishop, Lars Nordenskiöld, and Andrzej Stasiak The Journal invites scientists interested in genome architecture and function to contribute works. Of interest are new models and experimental strategies to explore the complex multiscale features and properties of chromatin, from DNA to nuclear organization, on many spatial and temporal levels.

Production Catie Curry Ray Wolfe

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. Canadian GST No. 898477062. Postmaster: Send address changes to Biophysical Society, 5515 Security Lane, Suite 1110, Rockville, MD 20852. Copyright © 2019 by the Biophysical Society. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Deadline for submission: August 31, 2019

For more information, go to www.biophysj.org

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Biophysicist in Profile

Cristina Paulino Areas of Research Fundamental understanding of how membrane transporters and channels work

Institution University of Groningen, The Netherlands

At-a-Glance

Cristina Paulino is an assistant professor and head of the electron microscopy unit at the Univer- sity of Groningen, The Netherlands. Her interest in membrane proteins began during her un- dergraduate years and has continued ever since. Her work focuses in understanding the struc- ture-function relationship that underlies the mechanism of transport of membrane proteins.

Cristina Paulino

Growing up, none of Cristina Paulino’s family members were involved in science. She comes from a Portuguese lower-middle class family; her father was a waiter and in between jobs man- aged his own café with the assistance of her mother. Although born in Germany as a first-generation immigrant, her family moved back to Portugal where she was raised for most of her youth. They later relocated back to Germany where she finished secondary school. Paulino’s interest in science stems back to her early childhood, when she was quite vocal in school. She recalls that her teachers had a hard time with her, as she asked many questions regarding the subject at hand. “I was mostly interested in chemistry and when I had to choose what exactly to study I decided to go for a biological applica- tion of chemistry and studied biochemistry,” says Paulino. She obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry in 2006 and 2008, respectively, from the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. “This is when I also became interested in biophysics and structural biology,” she recalls and she decided to explore it further as a PhD student at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany. For her postdoctoral work, she joined the lab of Raimund Dutzler at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2014. “There I setup the technique of high-res- olution single particle cryo-electron microscopy, which we then successfully employed to study membrane transporters and channels.” Paulino’s fascination with membrane proteins emerged during her undergraduate years and has persisted ever since. Her train- ing and interest in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) started during her PhD work. Paulino expalined, “At this point EMwas not perceived as a relevant technique in structural biology and we were often called ‘blobologists,’ referring to the low-reso- lution densities we obtained.” Her PhD supervisor and mentor Werner Kühlbrandt , who is one of the pioneers in the cryo-EM field, noted Paulino’s inclination for challenges which then created a path for her journey. She was a well-trained electron microscopist by the time her PhD studies were complete, but she had also noticed that the field had changed. “Suddenly, what we could achieve with cryo-EMwas mind-blowing, making it an in-

dispensable technique in structural biology.” She said “Being one of the few people from the ‘old cryo-EM generation’ obviously helped, our expertise was in high demand and a whole new level of research questions [were] waiting to be answered.” Paulino currently serves as an assistant professor on a ten- ure track, and is also the head of the electron microscopy unit and facility at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. In her group, she focuses on understanding the structure-func- tion relationship that underlies the mechanism of transport of membrane proteins. A colleague of Paulino, Dirk Slotboom , a professor in structural membrane biology in Groningen, admires her professionalism and hard-working demeanor. “Cristina does not [like] cold weather, yet she pushed her boundaries on a cross-country skiing trip in the Swiss Alps during [a] lab retreat. She almost collapsed, but pulled through. Yet another sign of her not giving up,” says Slotboom.

The golden EM trophy, is one of the things Paulino introduced in her group to show appreciation and boost the motivation within and with lab members. As she explains: “This trophy is passed to everyone in the group that had a nice accomplishment (pub- lished, unpublished, for research or a big life event, or simply for a great idea or support). This event gets a spot on the ‘wall of fame,’ which hangs next to the ‘wall of shame.’ Mistakes happen, we learn from them, and they can a good reason for a laugh, too.”

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Biophysicist in Profile

Bert Poolman , the director of the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute, whom Paulino had the pleasure of meeting at a European consortium of researchers several years ago, says “Cristina is a critical, demanding, ener- getic, fantastic colleague; always enthusiastic and extremely good in stimulating and challenging people.” Despite her young age, he believes that “Cristina already is very mature as [a] group leader.” Despite not having had a working relationship with her in the past, Poolman was impressed with her former work and urged Cristina to apply for the assistant professor position in cryo-EM at Groningen. During the summer of 2017, she super- vised the institution’s purchase of a state-of-the-art microscope, and Poolman had taken notice of the images that she was able to obtain. “[She] has produced fantastic structures from the moment the microscope was made operational. Cristina and I have recently obtained very exciting insights into the structure of a very complex membrane protein, which we hope to publish later this year.” Paulino advises young people who are starting their careers out in biophysics to “find their passion and always have fun doing your work. Network, communicate, find a mentor and an advocate.”

Cristina Paulino in action, acquiring data at the in-house high-end cryo-electron micro- scope Talos Arctica she supervises and manages.

The Biophysical Society is grateful to its 2019 Industry Partners.

GOLD SILVER

Find a Job. Post a Job. Visit the BPS Job Board today. https:/ biophysics-jobs.careerwebsite.com

Work-Life Balance: It Can Be Done, You Can Have Fun (In Both Worlds) June 19, 2019, 2:00 PM Eastern Presented by Alaina G. Levine

Register Today at biophysics.org/webinars

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

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Public Affairs and Outreach

Congressional Briefing on the Cryo-EMRevolution

Eva Nogales

On March 26, BPS, in coordination with Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D- CA-13), hosted Eva Nogales for a Congressional Briefing titled The Cryo-EM Revolution. The briefing was sponsored by the American Society for Cell Biolo- gy, JEOL.USA, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, in partnership with the University of California – Berkeley. Nogales’s briefing discussed the history of the technology, how it is used today, and shared some potential future policy recommendations to further its development. The federal government continues to support cryo-EM technology through the National Institutes of Health’s Common Fund and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Public Affairs Committee Chair Eric Sundberg and committee member Ed Egelman join Eva Nogales for the briefing.

Public Affairs and BiophysicsWeek The last issue of the BPS Bulletin contained highlights of Affiliate Events from around the world. The Public Affairs Committee (PAC) coordinated a number of events for Biophysics Week as well. Perhaps you caught some of these great moments on our Twitter feed. Maryland State Advocacy Day

On March 28, eight BPS members and staff meet with 17 legislative offices in Annapolis to talk about biophysics and the importance of funding scientific research. As a result of the visits, several offices sent letters to their federal counterparts advocating for research funding.

BPS Member Brian O’Rourke and Executive Office Jennifer Pesanelli meet with Delegate Michelle Guyton

BPS Members Dorothy Beckett and Simona Patange meet with staff from Senator Rosapepe’s office

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Public Affairs and Outreach

Around theWorld European Biophysical Societies’ Association Awards, 2019

Massachusetts Legislature Biomedical Research Briefing

The European Biophysical Societies’ Association (EBSA) is pleased to announce their 2019 awards to be presented at the EBSA/IUPAP Congress, Madrid, July 20–24.

The EBSA Young investigator Award, 2019, goes to Pere Roca-Cusachs of the University of Barcelona and Institute for Bioengineer- ing of Catalonia for his contributions to the field of mechanobiology. The award carries a €2,000 cash prize from EBSA.

Also on March 28, Massachusetts State Senator Pat Jehlen and State Representative Mike Connolly , Patrick Kearney , and Tommy Vitolo hosted a briefing featuring many members of the biomedical community, including three past BPS Pres- idents, who presented compelling talks on advancing crit- ical knowledge for improving health and alleviating illness, supporting economic and technological development, and educating the next generation of biomedical scientists, among others. The event was organized by PAC member Jonathan King . On Thursday, March 29, to close out the Biophysics Week live PAC events, BPS and the Johns Hopkins Science Policy Group hosted a Science Poster Night at Baltimore City Hall where graduate students presented their research findings on opi- oid-related deaths in Maryland, STEM education, pancreatic cancer, and other locally impactful topics. Thirteen research projects were presented in total. The night was designed to highlight important research efforts underway in Baltimore and share the importance of science-based policymaking with city officials. Science Poster Night at Baltimore City Hall

The Avanti/EBSA Award goes to Bruno Antonny , group leader at the Institut de Pharmacologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Valbonne-Sophia Antipolis, France, for his work on membrane biophysics. The award carries a US$3,000 cash prize from Avanti Polar Lipids Inc. More information about the awards and previous winners can be found on the EBSA web site (www.ebsa.org). Registration is now open for the forthcoming biennial EBSA/ IUPAP Congress in Madrid, where both recipients will present plenary lectures. Nobel laureates Greg Winter , United King- dom, and Stephen Hell , Germany, are also plenary lecturers. Places are also still available for the EBSA Summer Biophysics School (July 17–20, 2019) at El Escorial, near Madrid. Some of the invited speakers from the EBSA/IUPAP Congress, includ- ing Greg Winter (Nobel Laureate, 2018), will act as tutors. For more information, visit https:/ biophysics.wixsite.com/ebsa- summer2019.

September 19, 2019 Annually the Biophysical Society participates in the Rally for Medical Research, which brings over 200 scientific research and patient advocacy organizations together to call on our nation’s policymakers to prioritize medical research. Last year, BPS members from Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Mississippi participated in the day. BPS offers travel funds to members interested in participating. To express interest in the 2019 event, please contact Leann Fox at lfox@biophysics.org.

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Outreach

Science Fairs The Biophysics Award, sponsored by the Biophysical Soci- ety’s Public Affairs Committee, was presented at 40 science fairs in 19 states this year. The Public Affairs Committee has sponsored these awards for 10 years, since 2009. The award

Ana Quinones, the Biophysics Award recipient at the Delaware Valley Science Fair, displaying her certificate. Her winning project was titled “Using Brain Waves to Control a Robotic Arm for Smart Phone Use.” is presented to the high school student with the best bio- physics-related project. The winning projects varied in topic from biodegradable plastic, to bacterial growth, to machine learning. BPS heard from many of the awardees that they were grateful for the recognitions. One awardee wrote a thank you note including his plans to use the money from the award to continue engineering the robotic arm that was his winning project. BPS couldn’t give these awards without the help of members who volunteer to judge. We would like to thank the judges who volunteered their time to choose the projects for this award. For many students, presenting at a science fair is their first time giving a science talk outside of an in-school presentation, and it may be their first step into a scientific career.

Jack Adiletta, the Biophysics Award recipient at the Worcester Regional Science Fair, designed this robotic arm, and plans to use the award funds he received to continue to improve the design.

Connect with BPS

If you’re interested in being a Science Fair judge for the Biophysics Award in the future, please visit your myBPS profile and the “Get Involved” section of the website. Numbers By the In the first five months of 2019, 808 referees completed reviews for the Biophysical Journal

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Member Corner

Important Dates Revisiting the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology at the Single-Molecule Level July 15–18, 2019, Lima, Peru Biology and Physics Confront Cell-Cell Adhesion October 14–17 , 2019, Aussois, France Abstract Submission and Early Registration Deadline: June 14, 2019

64 th BPS Annual Meeting Feb 15–19, 2020, San Diego, California

Molecular Biophysics of Membranes June 7 –12, 2020, Tahoe City, CA

Student Spotlight Alan Perez-Rathke

University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Bioengineering As you move forward in science, what type of research do you see yourself doing? Why? I see myself combining biophysical models with large scale data science to help answer important biomed- ical questions. Ultimately, I would like to focus on translational research and my computational biophysical background will provide a specialized approach toward investigating critical medical problems.

Alan Perez-Rathke

Sarah Keller , University of Washington, Seattle, and Society member since 1991, received the Cottrell Plus STAR Award. Members in the News

Ken Dill , State University of New York, Stony Brook, and Society member since 1979, was awarded the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics.

Sarah Keller

Ken Dill

Six Society members are newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences:

Francisco Bezanilla

Yifan Cheng

Sean Decatur

Jeff Gelles

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz

Francisco Bezanilla , University of Chicago, and Society member since 1980, Yifan Cheng , University of California, San Fran- cisco, and Society member since 2011, Sean Decatur , Kenyon College, and Society member since 1993, Jeff Gelles , Brandeis University, and Society member since 1986, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz , Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Society member since 2000, Cynthia Wolberger (not pictured), Johns Hopkins University, and Society member since 1995.

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Career Development

How toWrite Your First Paper Writing a scientific manuscript is an important part of a student’s train- ing (undergraduate or graduate), and almost all advisors and mentors have nuggets of advice to share with their mentees. Writing the draft of your first manuscript and showing it to your advi- sor can be stressful. Students imagine the writing, figures, and more will be critiqued. From the advisor’s viewpoint, however, the science, storyline, and presentation style take priority. Here are some tips and tricks that I hope would help the first-time writer in this daunting task. 1. Once upon a time...lived happily ever after. Writing a research paper is not that different from general storytelling, except that your readers are a specialized group of peo- ple who are excited to read your paper and appreciate the science. When you first started reading research papers it probably felt like deciphering ancient hieroglyphic symbols; however, at this point, you know the lingo and jargon that are commonly understood in your research area. A research paper follows an hourglass shape of writing. The opening sen- tences in the introduction are broadest in appeal, and by the end of the introduction one or two questions are proposed, whose answers form the “meat” of your paper. The conclu- sion section touches upon the results (the narrow part of the hourglass) and gradually broadens to the wider implications. Think about what makes your research exciting and why your readers should be equally excited about it! If the paper is about the outcome, focus more on the novel results and discuss the implications. If it is about the process of obtaining the outcome, focus on the logic and flow of using particular techniques and the results obtained. 2. “Writing comes only after experiments” Many students assume that researchers will complete experiments first and then start to write. Although this approach is appropriate for your first paper (e.g., advisor looks at the data and mentions that we are ready to publish), most often writing and per- forming experiments happen simultaneously. Once you have your hypothesis tested and you have publishable preliminary data, you would want to compile the data in a presentable format. During that process, you will likely find that additional experiments or data are required to fill the gaps. You should put together an outline of the manuscript that pinpoints what data need to be presented in the main text and what data need to be pushed to supplementary material. At this point, you will have multiple (and possibly frequent) discussions with your advisor, who can shed light on how they approach writing papers, and give guidance on developing the story of your manuscript.

3. Figures! Figures! Figures! First and foremost a peer-re- viewer looks at the figures. The saying “a picture is worth 1,000 words” is aptly applied to a manuscript. The informa- tion, arrangement, color scheme, number of panels, are some of the issues to consider. Most readers get fatigued if there are more then three to four panels in a figure. As some jour- nals limit the number of figures, think carefully about what goes in Figure 1A and what goes in Figure 2B. Well-written and structured papers have logic and flow to the figures and most importantly, the order of figures should mirror the text in the results and discussion sections. For some manuscripts, the introduction section requires a schematic figure to explain or give background to the reader; therefore it is common that Figure 1 is a diagram or flowchart that gels with the introduc- tion. Many journals require authors to submit a graphical ab- stract, which is akin to a pictorial elevator pitch for the paper. 4. To table or not to table. After figures, tables are another essential part of the manuscript. If the table fills more than one page, consider if it would be better to push it to supple- mentary material. Again, this depends on the research area. It is not uncommon to see multi-page tables if they are essen- tial to the paper. In general, most manuscript drafts start with four figures and four tables, and then polishing happens. 5. Citations . While you’re writing, it is a good idea to insert placeholders in the text where you will add a citation later. This makes it easier to plug them in rather than having to search at the last minute. There are multiple bibliographic tools that help with inserting citations, and this is the last step to be done before submitting to your advisor. Most often, advisors don’t expect you to have all the citations inserted and the reference section filled up. It is standard practice to insert and format citations just before submitting to the journal. 6. Expecting an A+. Apart from a handful of PIs bragging about their student’s writing, most PIs do not expect your first draft to be perfect. So, don’t sweat it! Just get it off your desk! Do keep in mind, however, that most PIs are put off when there are glaring spelling and grammatical mistakes in the manuscript when you submit it for critique. Critiquing the science becomes difficult if there are issues with language and word usage and presentation style. Show the draft to someone else (postdoc or another mentor) before it ends up in your advisor’s inbox. Your best critic is your colleague, so don’t hesitate to ask your batchmate or science friend to cri- tique your paper. There could be a glaring gap or a logical jump that you overlooked.

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Career Development

7. Practice makes perfect. The experienced writer knows that writing is an unfinished task even after it gets the green sig- nal. When all issues are ironed out, gaps filled, proper claims made, and the writing is clear, the paper is ready for submis- sion to peer-review. 8. For non-native English speakers. The best piece of advice I got was first to write a paragraph in my native language, as if I am explaining the research to my friend or family member, then translate it into English, and correct the grammar. Poof!!! You have an original piece of writing and it will be a beauty to behold. 9. Nothing personal! Critiquing a manuscript is part and parcel of scientific writing. Do understand that the comments and critiques are not targeted to you at a personal level, they are intended to make the manuscript better. Your advisor and you are on the same team. Every reviewer hopes to read a well-polished manuscript and that manuscript could be yours!

Exercises for writing scientific papers Writing a research paper is hard, but it can be mastered with lots of practice. Do the following, and you will see your scientific writing skills improve. A. Have a list of writing prompts to keep you writing frequently. B. Write about 100–200 words everyday religiously without worrying about the grammar and spelling. The only rule is that the cursor should keep moving towards the right. C. If you read a published paper and it looks perfect to you, emulate the writing style, and make it yours. This helps to overcome writer’s block, in case you feel stalled in your writing.

Visit the Biophysical Society Career Development Webinar How toWrite a Biophysics ArticleWorthy of Publication www.biophysics.org/webinars

Grants & Opportunities AAASMentor Awards

NIH: Pilot and Feasibility Studies Evaluating the Role of RNA Modifications (the ‘epitranscriptome’) in Cancer Biology (R21) The NIH encourages basic research into the roles of RNA chemical modifications and their corresponding writers, readers, and erasers in the initiation and progression of cancer. Chemical modifications of RNA bases have been reported to regulate the fate and function of both coding and noncoding RNAs and are emerging as a critical element of post-transcriptional gene regulation. This grant will support investigation of novel scientific ideas or new model systems, tools or technologies that have the potential for significant impact on biomedical or biobe- havioral research. Who can apply/be nominated: Nominees should be based in a country with a EuChemS member organization at the time of nomination Deadline: July 17, 2019 Website: https:/grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/ PA-16-177.html

The AAAS has two categories of Mentor Awards (Life- time Mentor Award and Mentor Award) both honor individuals who during their careers demonstrate extraordinary leadership to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in science and engineering fields and careers. Both awards recognize an individu- al who has mentored and guided significant numbers of students from these groups to the completion of doctoral studies or who has impacted the climate of a department, college, or institution to significantly increase the diversity of students pursuing and com- pleting doctoral studies. Who can apply: The award is open to all regardless of nationality or citizenship. Deadline: August 1, 2019 Website: https:/www.aaas.org/awards/mentor/about

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Communities

BPS Student Chapters

Attendees at the first meeting of BPS Student Chapters, Baltimore, Maryland.

with free coffee or pizza were frequently well attended. Chap- ters highlighted approaches for communicating with their members to promote biophysics events and activities. Ideas included creating a chapter Facebook page; distributing flyers; and developing a chapter newsletter that profiled chapter members, publications, conference presentations, and stu- dent awards. The students also shared successful approach- es for fundraising to support chapter activities, including t-shirt sales (along with a chapter logo competition), holding raffles, and leveraging funding from university departments and other internal sources for student organizations. After presentations, an open discussion between students, chapter advisors, and the Biophysical Society Education Committee representatives followed. Students provided ideas and suggestions to each other for approaches to recruit more students to their chapters, how to promote events on campus, how to secure funding from both internal and external sources, among other topics. Students also provided feedback to the Society on how to best support the growth of chapters and to facilitate communication with other chapters throughout the year. Overall, feedback from the student chapter attendees at the session was very positive: students overwhelmingly found the session informative and gained new ideas for their chap- ters. The roundtable discussions were particularly valuable. Thanks to Seth Weinberg , Allen Price , and all who contributed to the planning of this event.

The BPS Student Chapters Program launched in the summer of 2017, and the inaugural student chapters were recognized on November 1, 2017. Since then, BPS has announced 18 student chapters around the world. The Education Committee sponsored the first meeting of the student chapters during the 2019 BPS Annual Meeting to help the chapters connect with one another and share their experiences. Planning for the first meeting of the student chapters began in May of 2018. Important goals of the organizers were to make the session as useful as possible for the students and for student chapters to take ownership of the event with the plan that in the future, the chapters themselves would drive the event planning. A questionnaire sent to the chap- ters identified marketing and recruitment, outreach, and event planning as the three most important topics to them. A follow-up check-in survey was sent out in September, and by the end of October, 100 percent of the chapters had respond- ed. Nine chapters volunteered to present on one of the three topics, and the new chapter in Egypt (Mustafa Kemal Univer- sity) offered to present an introduction to their university. At the BPS Annual Meeting in Baltimore, representatives from several chapters including, Arizona, Clemson Univer- sity, Emory University, Mustafa Kemal University, New York District, University of New Mexico, University of Missouri, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, presented high- lights from their chapters’ activities during the previous year. Several groups reported on successful events that had been held, including hosting invited speakers, professional devel- opment events, Biophysics Week activities, high school visits and science demonstrations, and science trivia nights. Events

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Communities

Intrinsically Disordered Proteins The IDP Annual Symposium At the 2019 Annual Meeting of BPS in Baltimore the Intrinsi- cally Disordered Proteins (IDP) Subgroup hosted an interest- ing and successful symposium. Opening speaker Gary Pielak discussed the intrinsically disordered cytoplasmic-abundant heat soluble class of proteins that allow tardigrades (“wa- ter bears”) to survive extreme dehydration conditions. Next, Jeetain Mittal presented atomistic and coarse-grained mod- eling approaches to accurately capture structural details and sequence dependence of liquid-liquid phase separation of disordered proteins. Joan-Emma Shea reported on advances in application of theory to self-assembly of the tau protein and its role in fibril formation and coacervation. After the break, James Shorter presented recent work on how nuclear import factors alter phase separation and aggregation behavior of RNA-binding proteins that are connected to ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and frontotempo- ral dementia. Jean Baum delivered a talk on the role of beta- Nominating Committee The BPS Bulletin is running a series highlighting the Society’s committees to help members learn more about the work that committee members do on behalf of BPS. With the BPS elections currently underway, it seems appropriate to highlight the Nominating Committee. The Nominating Committee is charged with developing a list of nominees for open officer and Council positions. The committee endeavors to provide the membership with a slate of candidates who reflect the geographic, scientific, and demographic diversity of the society. The Nominating Committee is elected annually by Council at its meeting on the last day of the Society’s Annual Meeting. The committee is elected for a period of one year, and the Chair is chosen from among four newly elected members. The Nominating Committee is made up of at least five vol- unteer members. The members include the Past-Commit- tee Chair, who serves as a non-voting consulting member, two members of Council, and two non-members of Council. The Immediate Past President during the year following the election of the Nominating Committee is also a voting member of the committee.

synuclein in controlling the formation of fibrils containing alpha-synuclein. The symposium ended with talks by Mingjie Zhang , who discussed how neuronal synapses are formed and dynamically regulated by assemblies containing postsynaptic density scaffold proteins, and Wolfgang Peti , who presented on the role of IDPs in substrate recognition for protein phos- phatases. A feature of the symposium is the announcement of and pre- sentations by the two winners of the IDP Subgroup Postdoc- toral Award, supported by the generosity of Keith Dunker . This year’s winners were Dan Bracha ( Cliff Brangwynne laboratory) who presented on the development of a photo-activatable biomimetic system for the spatial and temporal regulation of intracellular phase transitions, and Yi-Hsuan Lin ( Hue Sun Chan laboratory) who presented a polymer theory to describe the phase separation behavior of charged intrinsically disordered proteins. If you enjoyed the annual symposium and are not already a member of the IDP subgroup, we hope you will consider joining. — Hue Sun Chan and Nicolas Fawzi , Program Co-Chairs, IDP Subgroup Over the course of their term, members of the committee connect via phone and email to propose and discuss poten- tial nominees. Ensuring a diverse slate is a central goal of the committee. As committee members identify potential nominees, they contact those individuals to confirm the nominee’s willingness to stand for election. The committee prepares a list of at least eight nominees, including volunteer and petition candidates, for Council; two for President-Elect; and two for Treasurer and Secretary when necessary. The Committee Chair presents the list to Council for final approval when Council meets prior to the Annual Meeting. Once approved, the ballot is developed and sent to all mem- bers of the Society by June 15. The ballots, both electronic and paper are available, must be returned to the Society office before August 1. The thoughtful, hard work of the Nominating Committee and the votes of the members are vital to ensuring strong, dedicated leadership who are charged with pursing the mission of the Biophysical Society. Jane Clarke was the Chair of the Nominating Committee for 2018–2019 and Zev Bryant is the Chair for 2019–2020.

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BPSMeetings

Announcing the 2020 Thematic Meetings Mark your calendars! The BPS will hold three thematic meetings in 2020 that will explore focused topics from varying perspectives. Biophysics at the Dawn of Exascale Computers Hamburg, Germany May 12–15, 2020

Over the next decade molecular biophysics will be dominated by three technologies: electron microscopy and tomography, X-ray lasers, and machine learning. Integrating these technologies with molecular simulations will provide an unprecedented wealth of structural and dynamical data, from the detail of atomic interactions to movies of cellu- lar functions. This meeting will prepare the biophysics community to start advancing the development and implementation of innovative algorithms at the dawn of the exascale computing era. The advent of graphical processor units in the past 10 years has revolutionized our ability to tackle larger molecules over longer simulation times. This revolution has allowed the field to push from petascale computer facilities to the recent exascale computers, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer. The exascale computing initiative will mature in 2020 with the installation of the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and two more at Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Growing from peta- to exaflop performance will result in the production of three orders of magnitude more data, and at least an order of magnitude speedup. Biophysics will benefit from these technological advances, notably in the areas of diffraction data and single-particle image processing, hybrid modeling, molecular dynamics and free-energy calculations, as well as drug discovery, all front runners to leverage the unparalleled capacity of exascale computing.

Spatial Organization of Biological Functions

Bangalore, India August 16–19, 2020

Recent studies have shown that the dynamic spatial organization of different molecular components and activities within a cell and different cells within a tissue or community play critical roles in enabling the full functionality of the organism. As the significance of this field has been increasingly appreciated, it is now time to bring together leading scien- tists in the studies of the spatial organization of biological functions to discuss current ad- vances, share expertise, and most importantly, define the underlying biophysical principles. This thematic meeting will focus on a diverse set of topics such as intracellular function- al compartmentalization, molecular organizations in the membrane and in the cytosol, three-dimensional architecture of physical compartments and cellular activities, pattern formation at different length and time scales, tissue structures, biofilms, and host-com- mensal organizations.

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BPSMeetings

Physical and Quantitative Approaches to Overcome Antibiotic Resistance

Stockholm, Sweden August 30–September 2, 2020

Antibiotic resistance is a pressing global challenge to human health, threatening to reverse many of the great health advances of the 20th century. In response to this challenge, the global scientific community has mobilized to address both the microbiological and the medicinal-chemistry aspects of antibiotic resistance. This meeting will bring together bio- physical and bioengineering researchers working to diagnose, understand, and overcome antibiotic resistance. Key questions that will be addressed include: how do the limitations of (1) target recognition, (2) enzymatic degradation, and (3) small-molecule uptake shape the available space of antibiotics; how do bacteria communicate and interact as multicellu- lar communities; how does bacterial small-molecule transport function so differently than mammalian cell small-molecule transport; and how does the extracellular environment reinforce antibiotic resistance. Engineering approaches and the biophysical methodologies of spectroscopy, single-molecule and single-cell microscopy, computational modeling, and development of functional assays are uniquely suited to help answer these questions. This meeting seeks to explore the interface between biophysical research and the microbi- ology of drug resistance, highlighting the breadth of work that spans these two fields and encouraging new synergies to tackle this global health problem.

Molecular Biophysics of Membranes June 7-12, 2020 Granlibakken Tahoe, Tahoe City, CA

Conferences

Cells and subcellular compartments are defined by their membrane boundaries. Many processes critical to life involve the membrane and the membrane proteins embedded in these barriers, including transport of material in and out of cells, transfer of information that enables cells to sense and respond to their environment in a coordinated manner, and the energy conversion and storage needed to power the cell. Studies of these processes at the molecular biophysical level integrate a rich variety of approaches to understand the physical chemistry foundations of membrane biology. This will be the 17th conference bringing together scientists with a diverse range of perspectives, approaches, and disciplines includ- ing (but not limited to) computational and experimental methods in physiology, engineering, cell biology, chemistry, and physics. The goal of this conference is to bring together a diverse groups of scientists for cross-fertilization that spurs advances in the exciting and important field of membrane biology. In addition, the conference has historically provided a strong collab- orative network for trainees and early-career investigators.

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