Biophysical Society Bulletin | June 2022

Publications

Know the Editor Andrew Feig

While Parker’s book was written before the pandemic, the lessons therein are equally applicable to physical and virtual gatherings. Implementing the ideas requires us to pay atten tion to the spaces we inhabit, though. Are your participants physically in a convention center auditorium or attending the meeting virtually while simultaneously managing their lives from home with all of the complications that entails? How many of us got up to give a talk at four o’clock in the morning so that it meshed with the timeslot of a conference taking place somewhere else in the world? What we learned at RCSA was that virtual meetings can be highly effective if we apply the principles from The Art of Gathering , but we should not expect them to look the same as in-person events. As we return to traveling for face-to-face conferences, we should think deeply about why we meet and what we are seeking to accomplish by gathering (the topic of the first chapter of Parker’s book). As with backwards design used to effectively link student learning and pedagogical choices and the design of classroom exercises, this approach will set the stage for how future conferences can and should be designed. Can the goals be accomplished with a virtual gathering? If so, maybe we should forego the time and expense of travel, not to mention its environmental impact. If not, how do we make the meeting more impactful for participants and more equitable, so that barriers to participation are removed? What structures from virtual meetings should we retain in these gatherings that help us achieve our goals? And finally, what does an effective hybrid meeting look like where both in-person and virtual attendees can interact effectively and on an equal footing? These are the things that Parker’s book made me think about. While not biophysics per se, this book is broadly applicable to biophysicists and one that should make us reflect on our practices. We should all be thinking about the gatherings in which we participate, whether they are lab meetings, committee meetings, social gatherings with colleagues, or large conventions like the BPS Annual Meeting. Let’s strive to make these events more meaningful, more effective, and more inclusive going forward. To me, that starts by considering the art of gathering.

Research Corporation for Science Advancement Editor The Biophysicist

Andrew Feig

What are you currently working on that excites you? My current position as Senior Program Director at Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) involves fertilizing basic scientific discovery by providing funding for early-career faculty through our grantmaking programs. This position lets me think broadly about how the physical sci ences can contribute to solving important societal problems and how we should deploy resources in an effective manner. Biophysics touches on many of these initiatives, including current programs related to bioimaging, the gut-brain axis, and detecting and mitigating zoonotic threats. As a founda tion, we also work hard as part of these initiatives to develop communities of scientists that cross disciplinary silos and initiate collaborations among faculty who might otherwise never have met and learned about their shared interests. This has forced me to think deeply about why we have confer ences and convenings (either in person or virtual) and how we structure those meetings to accomplish our goals. While in my former faculty role, I would not have had the oppor tunity to work so broadly across disciplines and to marshal resources toward these problems the way I can working for a foundation that supports basic science. What have you read lately that you found really interest ing or stimulating (a paper, a book, science or not science)? I recently read The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker . At the beginning of the pandemic, we had to rapidly transition to accommodate work from home and travel restrictions. This change required us to rethink many of our interpersonal interactions, whether they were how we communicated with co-workers from our offices/ laboratories/departments, how we taught, how we conduct ed our collaborations, or how we held conferences. In my role at RCSA, I am a convener of many workshops and gatherings, and it was important to ensure that our work continued to advance despite these changes, and that required intentional ity, respecting the virtual environment of these meetings. We all attended virtual events where organizers simply took the agenda from their face-to-face conference and implemented it on a webinar platform. Unfortunately, many of these events were exceedingly painful to attend and not overly productive.

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June 2022

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