E-Board No. 79

April 3, 2009

Dear colleagues, dear friends,

The date of our next 11th ISDCI Congress is approaching rapidly. We are pleased to inform you that all plenary speakers have confirmed their participation and will guarantee a high scientific level of the meeting.

Richard A. Flavell: The inflammasome in health and disease.

Elena Levashina: The major role of a complement-like system in the mosquito antimalarial response.

Shizuo Akira: Negative regulation in TLR responses.

Dietmar Schmucker: Diverse immune receptors in arthropods: Divergence of diversity.

Chris Secombes: Evolution of immunoregulation in vertebrates ­ perspectives from a fish cytokine biologist.

Session chairpersons are currently busy with preparation of the program of symposia and workshops and will receive the submitted abstracts to finalize the program as soon as possible.

At this time, we have about 300 registered participants and are still receiving the abstracts. Therefore we have decided to extend the deadline for the early registration and abstract submission until April 14, 2009. After that, the web application will not accept any registration for the reduced fee nor will it accept any abstracts.

We do hope that you will help us make the 11th ISDCI Congress scientifically excellent. I am looking forward to seeing you all in Prague.

With best regards,

Martin Bilej
On behalf of the Organizers

***************

Dear ISDCI members,

As Martin Bilej mentioned in his eboard message, we have decided to extend the deadline for early registration(the low registration cost ) and abstract submission for the ISDCI Congress in Prague to April 14, 2009. We need more participants to register for the Congress.

I hope that all of you are trying to convince as many of your colleagues, students and postdocs as possible to register and to participate in our Congress. If anyone wishes to have flyers or a powerpoint presentation to present our meeting to your colleagues, please contact Martin Bilej (mbilej@biomed.cas.cz) and he will happy to send you that material. I hope to see you all in Prague this summer.

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Söderhäll
President

***************

ISDCI Election of New Officers for 2009

The ballot for the election of new ISDCI Officers for the vacant positions has now been counted. The counting was double checked in liasion with an independent assessor (Liz Dyrynda (Edinbugh, UK).

There was an excellent response from the members with a record number of votes cast. Indeed about 37 % of the current membership took the trouble to declare their preference. Thank you to all those who sent in ballot papers.

There was stiff competition for all the competitive positions so all candidates did extremely well.

The winners are as follows with the number of votes they received indicated in parentheses.

President Elect - Miki Nakao (Japan) (51 votes)
VP Americas - Oriol Sunyer (USA) (61 votes)
VP Asia & Oceania - Anlong Xu (China) (52 votes)
Martin Bilej (Czech Republic) goes through unopposed as Secretary Treasurer with 100 votes.

Congratulations to all the winners and a big thank you to the losers who fought well and took part in the election.

The new Officers will take up their duties after the Presidential hand-over at the Prague meeting this summer, so thereafter the ISDCI Executive will comprise:

Past President: Kenneth Soderhall (Sweden)
President: Val Smith (UK)
President Elect: Miki Nakao (Japan)
VP Americas: Oriol Sunyer (USA)
VP Europe &Africa: Jorunn Jorgensen (Norway)
VP Asia & Oceania: Anlong Xu (China)
Secretary Treasurer: Martin Bilej (Czech Republic)
Secretary Education: Courtney Smith (USA)

Very best wishes and hope to see many of you in Prague this summer.

Val Smith
President Elect

**************

We are sorry to report that Lars Pilström passed away on March 8, 2009. The funeral was held today, April 3. If you wish to send your condolences, the address of his wife, Christina Pilström, is:

Brunna åkerväg 3
S-740 20 VÄNGE
Sweden

In lieu of flowers the family asks that any donations go to "Doctors Without Borders"/"Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)"


Dr. Eva Bengtén, Ph.D.
Director of the Microbiology Graduate Program
Department of Microbiology
University of Mississippi Medical Center

**************

E-Board Archive

Zoology Building · University of Aberdeen · Aberdeen · AB24 2TZ Tel: +44 (0)1224 272872 · Fax: +44 (0)1224 272396 · Email: info@isdci.org