E-Board No. 43

August 2006 E-Board

Message from the new ISDCI President, Kenneth Söderhäll

It is a honour to be taking over as President for our Society and I must confess it is a real challenge try to be as successful as Chris Secombes has been.

Our 10th Congress in Charleston was a genuine success both as regards the scientific program and the venue and I again would like to thank Greg Warr and his team for an excellent job in preparing and hosting the Congress.

The election results of officers for ISDCI showed that Valerie Smith will take on the positon as president-elect and will take over as President at our next Congrees in 2009. Other changes are that L.Courtney Smith will be secretary education and Miki Nakao will be Vice President for Asia-Oceania. I congratulate the new officers of ISDCI and hope that we together can make ISDCI attract more members. Our outgoing committe members have been active in many ways and I would like formally to acknowledge their contributions to the Society over the past few years.

Several important issues for the Society were discussed during the Executive Board meeting in Charleston. The membership fees will be 60 US dollars for members and 40 US dollars for students. This fee includes electronic submission to our journal and those who wishes to have also the hard copy has to pay 60 USdollars extra. Again it is important to emphasize that the major source of income to the Society is from membership and therefore those individuals who think they are members please if you have any doubts check with Norm Miller. One important issue is therefore to try to increase the number of ISDCI members and also to create a possibilty to have associtated societies to ISCI. Therefore I am negotiating with Elseveier about the possibiltiy to obtain reduced subscription rates to a number of Elsevier journals for members in associated(affiliated) societies as well as for ISDCI members.

During the Exectuive meeting in St. Andrews i n 2003 there was a strong voice to increase the involvement of younger members in each region. It was proposed and agreed that we create a Scientific Research Committee, to feedback views to the Executive Committee, with two representatives from each of our three regions. The representatives would be expected to attend the Officers meeting, but would not have voting rights. A committe was formed at our Executive meeting in Charlestone and the following younger members attended the meeting and gave vaulable advices to our Officers; John Hanson and Coen Adema for America, Stephen Bird and Geert Wiegertjes for Europe and Ikuo Hirono and Hiroaki Suetake for Japan and Oceania. This committe will be operating until the next congress

ISDCI will not only organise the next Congress and will also be involved in sponsoring meetings and Martin Flajnik will hopefully organise as usual a min-sympsoiuum at the AAI symposium and Alain Beschin and collegaues will organsie a meeting on Innate Immuntiy in October this year in Belgium. Martin Flajnik has also been asked to offer the International Congress of Immunology to be held in Rio de Janeiro August 12-17, 2007 that ISDCI be represented at this Congress with a speaker/-s or mini-symposium. I sincerely hope that there will be more ISDCI sponsored symposia and proposals for this can be sent to me.

Finally, I am happy to announce that our next the 11th ISDCI congress will be held in Prague, Czeck Republic and Martin Bilej will chair the local organising commite that will host us. I am looking forward to the Prague Congress which I am convinced will be yet another excellent Congress and I thank Martin Bilej for taking on this heavy duty to organise our next Congress.

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Report of the Editors of Developmental and Comparative Immunology

The Editors of the Society´s journal,Developmental and Comparative Immunology, are delighted to report that our journal is not only doing well but moving from strenght to strength. We are particularly pleased that the impact factor of DCI has increased continously from 2002 to 2005 and today it stands at 3.3.

Each year 12 issues of the journal are printed with an average of about 100 published manuscripts per year. The rejection rate has been around 50% for the past 3 years but for 2006 a slightly lower rejection rate is expected. The move to electronic submission, editing and rapid on-line publication of accepted articles have been very successful. The handling time of manuscripts from submission to the initial decision by the Editors-in-Chiefs has improved from 48 days in 2004 to approximately 30 days in 2006.

The breakdown of submitted manuscripts by species shows that amongst the invertebrates manuscripts dealing with insects ( 22 in 2005) and crustaceans (20 in 2005) are the most common, and manuscripts on fishes ( 63 in 2005) and mammals (35 in 2005 ) predominant for the vertebrate taxa.

In order to maintain and improve the qualtiy of our journal, and to keep the impact factor rising DCI relies on the submission of high quality manuscripts from ISDCI members: hence we welcome your continuing contributions in the form of original manuscripts. In addition, we are particularly interested to publish high quality reviews,mini-reviews and Special Issues. If you are interested to write (or guest-edit ) a review or Special Issue, please send a brief proposal to one of the Editors.

Sumitted by

Kenneth Söderhäll, Greg Warr, Bill Clem

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Message from the New Secretary of Education, L. Courtney Smith

As noted by Dr. Söderhäll above, I will be assuming the duties of secretary of education that were previously held by Dr. Val Smith, who is now our Presedent-Elect. Please send your announcements, open positions faculty, postdoc and graduate students to me. I will post them on the ISDCI webpage and send them out on the eboard. My email is csmith @gwu.edu

Students and postdocs should not be shy about asking me for help or advice. I can also post advertisements for those looking for positions, including posting or sending out single-page resumes.

I would also like to announce that Dr. Edwin Cooper has agreed to be the first official ISDCI Historian.

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10th Congress T SHIRTS and PHOTOs still available!!

The Society still has a small number of 10th Congress T-shirts and Congress photographs available. If you would like to purchase these, please contact Greg Warr at warrgw@musc.edu for details.

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Graduate Student Positions Available

The Department of Microbiology solicts applications from students interested in pursuing a PhD in Comparative Immunology. We have a strong research group interested in various aspects of Fish Immunology including T cell and B cell function, cell surface receptors, anti-viral immunity, immunoglobulin structure and function, etc. The faculty includes: Drs. Eva Bengten, V Gregory Chinchar, Marvin Cuchens, Craig Lobb, Norman Miller, and Melanie Wilson. Incoming students are expected to have an undergraduate GPA > 3.0 and a GRE score (verbal + quantitative) greater than 1100. A limited number of stipends ($24,000/year) are available to qualified students on a competitive basis. If interested please contact VG Chinchar, Director of the Graduate Program in Microbiology (vchinchar@microbio.umsmed.edu) or visit our website (http://microbiology.umc.edu). Applications for the Fall semester 2007 should be submitted before March 1, 2007.

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