President's Message | March 2018

Rick Domann, Ph.D., The University of Iowa

The Society has gotten off to a busy start in 2018. The call for symposium sessions for the 2018 Annual Meeting in Chicago closed in mid-January and yielded 17 proposals for symposia and 2 proposals for pre-meeting workshops. These proposals have recently been reviewed by the program committee and are currently under consideration for inclusion into the 2018 meeting program. Based upon the quality and breadth of the submitted proposals, it promises to be another exciting scientific conference filled with state of the art methods in redox biology and cutting-edge research on free radicals in biology and medicine. Please stay tuned for future announcements on the SfRBM 2018 scientific program and make plans to join us for the annual meeting and scientific conference in Chicago, November 14-17, 2018. Click here to learn more.

Later this month, the SfRBM Council will convene for 2 days in Chicago to chart the future strategic direction of the society. Having secured a lasting agreement with Elsevier, publisher of our Society’s official journals, Free Radical Biology & Medicine and Redox Biology, it is time to focus attention on the Society’s 5-year strategic plan to leverage this relationship for the mutual benefit of the Society, its members, and its publisher. This 2-day session will result in specific goals with achievable timelines that invoke peer to peer accountability to facilitate outcomes. Already as part of the Elsevier agreement, we have created a 9-member Publications Outreach Committee that provides support to activities intended to foster scientific content and recruit manuscript submissions to the Society’s journals. The first such supported activity in 2018 is a Presidential symposium at the Gerontological Society of America Biological Sciences Program chaired by Kelvin Davies of the University of Southern California.

So now, here we are on the cusp of another equinox; an autumnal equinox for those in the southern hemisphere, and a vernal (spring) equinox for those in the northern hemisphere, which means longer days and more sunshine. And if it’s spring, it’s time for the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) to hold its annual Capitol Hill Day. This is an occasion when members of the FASEB Board and Science Policy Committees meet with their members of Congress in Washington, DC, to urge them to increase funding for federal science agencies. SfRBM is one of 31 constituent member societies of FASEB, and this year SfRBM was represented in the FASEB delegation by Eric Kelley, West Virginia University, and Marcelo Bonini, Medical College of Wisconsin. Many thanks to them for their service in this capacity!

Coming up later this year there are plenty of other redox-related biomedical symposia and networking opportunities coming up for your consideration. On April 22, 2018, at the American Physiological Society meeting at Experimental Biology 2018, Adam Case, University of Nebraska, and Chris Kevil, Louisiana State University, will chair a session entitled “Redox Biology: A Unifying Theme in the Etiology of Human Diseases”. On April 12-13, the Medical College of Wisconsin will host its second Redox Biology Symposium. Then later this summer SfRBM co-hosts the 2018 SfRBM Regional Redox & Oberley Symposium which will take place in Omaha, NE, on June 8-9. Thanks to Becky Oberley Deegan and the rest of the local organizing team at UNMC for organizing this spectacular program. Additionally, the Society for Free Radical Research-International (SFRR-I), of which all SfRBM members are also members, will convene for its 19th Biennial Meeting in Lisbon from June 4-7, 2018, hosted this year by our European sister society SFRR-E. Also, the Gordon Research Conference on Thiol-Based Redox Regulation and Signaling will be held July 15-20, 2018 in Spain.

These venues and programs should provide ample opportunities for the field of Free Radical and Redox Biology to flourish on the world stage throughout the year!