President's Message | September 2017

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

In the event you are returning from a summer break and just tuning back in, I’m happy to inform you that SfRBM has selected Dr. Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins University as the recipient of the 2017 SfRBM Discovery Award. This is timely and appropriate since Gregg is a 2016 Lasker Award laureate. Sometimes called “America’s Nobel”, the Lasker Awards have gotten a reputation for identifying future Nobel Prize winners. Since 1945, eighty-six Lasker Award laureates have received Nobel Prizes, 32 within the last two decades! Congratulations to Dr. Semenza on this much-deserved award and good luck to you and your colleagues before the Nobel committee!

The beginning of fall and the new academic semester signals that our annual meeting is just around the corner; program announcements have been sent out to members and registration is open online. This year we will be convening at the Hilton Baltimore, a mere 2 blocks from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Please notice that the meeting will be one week later than previous SfRBM annual meetings, and will occur on Nov 29 – Dec 2.  A major benefit of meeting in Baltimore is the close proximity to Johns Hopkins University and to the National Institutes of Health. I encourage everyone to get to Baltimore early this fall and enjoy a very special SfRBM-JHU-NCI co-sponsored doorstep symposium that begins Wednesday, November 29, at 8 AM at the meeting hotel. We will again be using the SfRBM meeting app which has become increasingly popular, so please be sure to download and install that very important tool, and also be active and participate in SfRBM’s social media platforms during the meeting, posting with the hashtag #SfRBM2017. An overview of the 2017 annual meeting program may be found here.

The Society continues to work with FASEB in the never ending quest to bolster federal funding for research. To that end, SfRBM is pleased to welcome FASEB’s new president, Dr. Thomas Baldwin, to address the Council at the upcoming 2017 annual meeting. SfRBM intends to continue as an active and engaged constituent society within the FASEB federation.

This brings me to another point: SfRBM is your Society and I encourage you to be actively involved, not only by attending the meeting, but also by submitting symposia proposals for the 2018 meeting, participating in the mentoring program, joining with Women in Science to promote and enhance diversity and inclusion, volunteering for any of the many committee opportunities and/or running for election to SfRBM Council. Please don’t be shy, express your interest and get involved!

Finally, a reminder that the next regional 2018 SfRBM-Oberley symposium will be held at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 8-9, 2018. With Omaha’s very central location we hope to draw redox biology investigators from across the upper Midwest and we encourage our colleagues and SfRBM members in the nearby states of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Watch for further announcements as the time draws closer.