Biophysical Society Bulletin | May 2024

President's Message

Behind the Scenes: Organizing the BPS Annual Meeting

How the BPS Annual Meeting comes together continues to be a mystery for seasoned and new members alike. Questions always arise on how the abstract catego ries are selected, how platforms and symposia are assembled, or how emerging areas of research are incorporated into the program.

agreed to take on this daunting task. They have been working tirelessly since last October! Symposia. The main task of the Program Committee is to select topics and confirm four speakers for each of the Annual Meeting symposia. Their work begins 18 months in advance of the Annual Meeting and follows a relatively structured process. The first order of business is to review the symposium propos als received from BPS members in response to a call that goes out annually around mid-July. For the 2026 meeting, it will be sent July 19. Mark your calendar for this key date! The selec tion process aims to identify meritorious proposals that cover exciting and diverse areas of investigation that have not been covered in recent meetings. The Committee also reviews prior meeting statistics such as the number of abstracts submitted within each category, session attendance data, and feedback from surveys to ensure that the selected topics accurately re flect member interest. Therefore, by selecting a category under which to submit your abstract this year, you will influence the scientific content of future meetings. In a previous blog, past President David Piston advised on how to choose a category and whether to opt for a platform/poster or poster-only opportunity: www.biophysics.org/blog/how-to-choose-your abstract-category-for-the-annual-meeting. The outcome of this initial step is to develop a draft program that includes titles and potential speakers for the 20 regular symposia. This draft is shared with Council for review and is discussed at the Annual Meeting at Saturday Council. I remem ber that during my 2015–2018 term as councilor, the review of this initial draft was quite granular, and on occasion pointed! Nowadays, the process is much smoother and more collabora tive, with the clear goal of selecting exciting topics and speak ers that represent the entire breadth of our membership. Another step is for the program chairs to engage with Sub group chairs at the Annual Meeting. This collaboration has helped to better integrate regular symposia with Subgroup- organized sessions and has provided a deeper pool of speakers and more targeted topics. Based on input from Council and Subgroup chairs, the program chairs revise the initial draft and present the updated version to Wednesday New Council for approval. Know that program chairs and members of Council always want to hear from you with feedback on past sessions and with suggestions for the future. Stop them in the hallway or send them a brief message! They will appreciate your input. At this point, one year in advance of the meeting, invitations go out to approved speakers to confirm four speakers for each symposium. A fifth speaker will be chosen as a Symp Select speaker in the fall from the submitted abstracts. If you are a

Gabriela K. Popescu

No amount of communication can fully describe the process because it has myriad moving parts and because it is constant ly evolving. In this column, I aim to answer some of the most frequently asked questions, while I am anticipating with excite ment our 69th Annual Meeting, scheduled for February 15–19, 2025, in Los Angeles. The responsibility for the scientific content of the Annual Meeting rests exclusively with the President, the Council, and the Program Committee. An essential goal is to balance com munity needs with the physical limitations of space and time! Our most recent Annual Meeting, which was held last Febru ary in Philadelphia, featured 24 symposia, 4 workshops, 64 platforms, and more than 3,070 posters. In addition to these much-anticipated scientific sessions, the Annual Meeting has evolved to include career development sessions, committee meetings, panel discussions, and social events, each with im portant mission-relevant goals. It is always a challenge to fit all this abundant programming into six short days, and sometimes the venue may impose additional limitations. Dorothy Chaconas , our seasoned Director of Meetings and Exhibits, and her team provide an initial scheduling template. This matrix sets upper limits for the number of symposia and workshops we can plan and has remained relatively constant over the past several years. Within this framework, we endeavor to select the most exciting, engaging, and representative topics and speakers! As the president of BPS, it is my privilege to shape the 2025 Annual Meeting by nominating the BPS Lecturer, the topic for the Presidential Symposium, and the chairs of the Program Committee. I am thrilled to share with you that Eric Gouaux , Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, has agreed to give the 2025 BPS Lecture. He will demonstrate the power of rigorous biophysical research in revealing the funda mental mechanisms of neurotransmission, and thus helping to alleviate the global burden of neuropsychiatric disorders. Sim ilarly, to draw attention to the critical role biophysics research can play in solving global threats, I selected for the Presidential Symposium the topic of “A Sustainable Future.” Finally, I invited a dynamic duo, Sudha Chakrapani , Case Western Reserve Uni versity, and Christopher Yip , University of Toronto, to co-chair the Program Committee. I could not be more grateful that they

May 2024

2

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY