Biophysical Society Bulletin | May 2024

President's Message

Officers President Gabriela K. Popescu President-Elect Lynmarie K. Thompson Past-President Taekjip Ha Secretary Teresa Giraldez Treasurer Samantha Harris Council Patricia Bassereau Margaret Cheung Martin Gruebele Taviare Hawkins Anne Kenworthy Syma Khalid Emmanuel Margeat Anita Niedziela-Majka Elizabeth Rhoades Tamar Schlick Valeria Vasquez Jing Xu Biophysical Journal Vasanthi Jayaraman Editor-in-Chief The Biophysicist Padmini Rangamani Editor-in-Chief Biophysical Reports

Recently, Past President Taekjip Ha described this process and explained new features we introduced in Philadelphia, including Symp Se lect speakers, five-minute flash talks, and the option for platform speakers to also present a poster: www.biophysics.org/bps-bulletin/who gets-to-present-at-the-bps-annual-meeting. Categories. Note that every three years, Council reviews and updates the abstract categories to ensure that the Annual Meeting reflects both ongoing trends and emerging areas of research. If a category receives consistently numerous abstracts, it may be divided into more specific areas to form a new category. Conversely, when a category receives consistently limited numbers of abstracts, it may be merged with an adjacent area. It is always the case that any one abstract fits into several categories. Make sure to review all categories to select the most appropriate for your interest. And contact us with suggestions to improve the fit. Speakers. Lastly, a frequent question refers to how speakers are selected. Attendees who pre sented orally in any session of the previous two meetings—whether in a meeting symposium, a Subgroup symposium, or a workshop—are excluded from the list of potential speakers for two years. Platform speakers are excluded from the list for one year. This excluded-speaker rule has been in effect for more than a doz en years and it has been a clear and effective means to increase the diversity of our topics and speakers, to hear from as many members as possible, and to ensure that all meritorious science has access to the microphone. Howev er, cancellations—which lately have increased in frequency—force program chairs to make last-minute substitutions for speakers. I can only imagine the stress that program chairs experience while filling vacant slots at the last minute! Next time you notice a repeat speaker, know they have generously agreed to fill in due to an unexpected cancellation! I hope this information will help you to better plan for the next meeting. Keep an eye out for calls for proposals, and on the deadline for abstract submission. Please continue to reach out with questions and suggestions. It is your engagement that makes BPS a community. — Gabriela K. Popescu , President

Regular or an Early Career Member, you can select the Symp Select option during abstract submission to be considered automatically for the fifth slot of a symposium. Even if program chairs do not select your abstract for a sym posium slot, Council members will consider all remaining applications for an oral presenta tion when assembling platform sessions (see below). Workshops. Each year, the Annual Meeting accommodates four to five workshops. Pro gram chairs consider topics and speakers from member-submitted proposals as they do for regular symposia. In addition to the 20 symposia and 5 work shops, there are 5 named symposia, which have specific programmatic purposes. These are: Best of Biophysical Journal , Future of Biophys ics, New and Notable, President’s Symposium, and, new in 2025 as a now recurring special symposium, Black in Biophysics. Speakers for these symposia are selected by the chairs from membership-wide calls for nominations that go out during the summer before the meeting or by consultation with appropriate communities. Lastly, there are 18 Subgroup-organized symposia, scheduled by rotation on Saturday morning or afternoon of the Annual Meeting. For these, the topics and speakers are selected by Subgroup chairs. Platforms. In contrast with symposia, where topics and speakers are selected by program chairs and must be approved by Council, plat form sessions represent the collaborative effort of members of Council and the Program Committee. The meeting can generally ac commodate about 64 platform sessions, and these will reflect proportionally the number of submissions in each abstract category. To form a two-hour platform session in any one cate gory, the total number of submissions for oral/ poster plus half the number of submissions for poster-only must be greater to or equal to 30. If this number is greater than 60, the category will include two platform sessions. Next, the program chairs and some members of Council and the Program Committee, along with members with areas of expertise not already represented, review the abstracts for which authors have selected the oral/poster option and choose seven speakers, two of whom will also chair, per platform session.

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 © 2024 by the Biophysical Society. Darren Early Laura Phelan

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