ISCB Officers Elected for Next Term

The Board of Directors (BoD) of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is pleased to announce the results of the recent officer elections. Members of the Society cast their ballots online, electing the following board members, whose election includes a seat on the Society’s executive committee:

• Vice President – Michal Linial, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
  Dr. Linial has been an actively contributing member of the ISCB BoD since January of 2004 and concurrently serves as chairwoman of the steering committee of the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), ISCB’s conference partner for meetings held in Europe (e.g. ISMB/ECCB 2004 in Glasgow, ISMB/ECCB 2007 in Vienna, and ISMB/ECCB 2008 in Stockholm).
  
• Treasurer – Reinhard Schneider, EMBL-Heidelberg, Germany
  Dr. Schneider has been actively shaping ISCB as its Vice President since January of 2006, and he has served on the ISCB BoD since 2005. His election to the position of Treasurer replaces long-term treasurer David Rocke, who has served in this role for the past seven years.
  
• Secretary – Janet Kelso,
  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
  Dr. Kelso was elected to the ISCB BoD in January 2005, and a year later was appointed to fill the mid-term vacated position of secretary. Dr. Kelso has contributed enormously to the advancement of ISCB.This is her second reelection to this position while concurrently serving as chairwoman of the ISCB conferences committee.

Following the bylaws, the ISCB BoD appointed two additional vice presidents. Although this is not intended to set a precedent for future elections, these appointments will enable ISCB’s Executive Committee (EC) to carry out specific activities and nurture external relationships that are vitally important to the growth and future success of the organization as a whole. The BoD arrived at their final decision with careful consideration of the wishes of the membership as expressed by their votes, countered with the objective of providing the executive committee with additional proven contributors who will help carry the momentum of this core group of leaders throughout the next term. The appointed vice presidents are:

• Vice President – Terry Gaasterland, University of California, San Diego, USA
  Dr. Gaasterland was a founding member of the ISCB BoD, served as Secretary from 1999-2000, and returned to serve as a VP in January 2007. She has and will continue to serve as the primary ISCB representative of the president at affiliated and co-sponsored conferences, such as RECOMB, InCoB and PSB. In addition, Dr. Gaasterland serves as the executive committee liaison to the San Diego based ISCB administrative staff, whose headquarter offices are at UCSD.
  
• Vice President – Scott Markel, Accelrys, USA
  Dr. Markel joined the ISCB BoD in 2006, has been serving as a co-chair of the ISCB publications committee since 2007, and was instrumental in brokering the deal to renew ISCB’s partnership with Oxford University Press to once again designate Bioinformatics as an official journal of the Society. His excellent working relationship with both of ISCB’s official journals (PLoS Computational Biology has been our journal since 2005), and his continued efforts toward expanding the breadth and depth of ISCB’s publications, makes his appointment as a vice president particularly important to the BoD and EC alike.

Each of the above officers will begin their terms on January 21, 2009.  For additional information on ISCB’s annual nominations and elections procedures please see http://iscb.org/iscb-leadership-a-staff-/officers-and-board-directors/nomination-election-procedures. The next call for nominations of directors, officers and student council leaders will open February 16, 2009, for terms beginning in January of 2010.

TOP

View Talks from the ISMB Conference in Toronto

The ISMB 2008 conference in Toronto was touted as a scientific success, with lots of pre-conference excitement as well as positive press and accolades following the event. Now all site visitors can view the keynote talk entitled "Microbial Communities in Health and Disease," presented by Claire Fraser-Ligget of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. This talk provides a taste of the quality of presentations given at the conference that are now available for remote viewing online.

The conference organizers and Society leadership are proud to make dozens of the talks from the conference available to current members when logged in to their membership accounts. To view the full selection of talks login here, or if you are already logged in, select the 'My ISCB' tab at the top of this page and within the ISCB User Menu select 'ISMB 2008 Multimedia'.

Access to the full listing of presentations now available online is an exclusive ISCB membership benefit. If you are not a current member we invite you to join to begin taking advantage of this as well as the many other benefits ISCB members enjoy. Please select the 'Membership' tab at the top of this page to join as a new member or renew an expired membership.