Biophysical Society Newsletter | September 2017

18

2017

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

SEPTEMBER

Subgroups

Exocytosis Endocytosis I am pleased to announce the members of the Exo/Endo Subgroup Organizing Committee for 2018: Dixon J. Woodbury , Brigham Young University, Chair; Brian M. Salzberg, University of Pennsylvania, Past Chair; Amy Lee , University of Iowa, Chair-Elect; Ilana Lotan , Tel Aviv Uni- versity; and Les Satin , University of Michigan. We received 10 nominations for the Sir Bernard Katz Award. Each nominee was an outstanding leader and scientist in the areas of exocytosis or endocy- tosis. A first round of voting reduced the pool to just two, and in a final vote Manfred Lindau , Cor- nell University and Max Planck Institute, Göt- tingen, was selected as the 2018 Awardee. Lindau will give the concluding talk at our 2018 meeting. The other speakers will be: Tom Kirschhausen , Harvard University; Patrik Rorsman , Oxford Uni- versity; Katalin Toth , Centre de Recherche Université Laval Robert-Giffard, Quebec; Michael Tamkun , Colorado State University; and Geert van den Bogaart , Radboud University, The Neth- erlands. We are also excited that one of the Soci- ety’s symposia for the 2018 meeting is on synaptic vesicle fusion and retrieval. This is thanks to the efforts of Ruth Heidelberger and Ling-gang Wu . We look forward to seeing you all at the meet- ing and remind you that as you submit your abstracts, be sure to have your students enter the SRAA competition and indicate their topic as Exo/Endo. We will also be looking at the ab- stracts to select several students to give short pre- sentations at the start of our subgroup meeting, as we have done the last several years. It should be a great meeting. See you in San Francisco on Saturday, February 17, 2018. — Dixon J. Woodbury , Subgroup Chair

Mechanobiology The Mechanobiology Subgroup has a great symposium planned for the BPS Annual Meet- ing, which will be held February 17, 2018, in San Francisco, California. We are delighted to announce a preliminary program that includes (in alphabetical order): Daniel Fletcher , University of California, San Francisco; Vernita Gordon , Uni- versity of Texas, Austin; Sevan Hopyan , University of Toronto, additional speakers to be announced. Our program includes both theory and experi- ment, and model systems ranging from molecular reconstitution to whole-organism biophysics. In addition to the speakers listed above, we look forward to talks from graduate students and post- docs, which will be drawn from abstracts submit- ted for the meeting. Student talks have been a highlight of the symposium, and we are certain that the coming year will be no exception. Finally, we respectfully request that you consider joining the subgroup when you are renewing your membership dues. This modest financial contribution helps defray the costs of organizing the subgroup, and as importantly allows us to keep in touch with you with news and updates on subgroup business. — Alex Dunn (Chair, 2018) — Meredith Betterton (Secretary/Treasurer 2018) — Kristian Franze (Chair, 2019)

New Subgroup forming: Cell Biophysics To sign the petition in support of the subgroup, write to subgroups@biophysics.org.