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ISME Presidents' update
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Welcome to the Year 2021 ISME colleagues!
Looking back at 2020, I think we can be pleased with what we were able to accomplish despite COVID-19. Although we had to postpone our ISME18 meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, to 2022, our first major virtual meeting #UnityInDiversity, organized by a team of early career researchers, was a huge success with nearly 1200 attendees. The technical support for this meeting was provided by our ISME staff member Sabine van Wegen, together with her ISME Office colleagues Lydia Zwart and Sarash de Wilde. What an impressive achievement given that ISME had no previous experience with hosting virtual meetings!
Another highlight of 2020 was the launch of our second journal ISME Communications in October, for which submissions are already pouring in. We are delighted to see the enthusiasm with which the new editors for this journal are working hard to make it a success. Please also check out the update on what’s happening at The ISME Journal, where our Editors in Chief are investing their time and efforts into making improvements to the submission system and turn around times of submissions.
We are very proud that our ISME17 meeting in Leipzig, Germany in 2018 was recently honored with a coveted award from the largest association for the global meetings industry, the International Congress and Convention Association. The award highlighted our ‘Night of the Microbes’ evening, our free-to-attend event at which our members gave “inspiring ‘TED-like talks” to the general public. Many thanks to the ISME17 Local Organizing Committee, particularly Sara König from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, and Sarash de Wilde from our ISME Office, for organizing this event!
You will find more information about what is new at ISME by clicking on the links below. You may have noticed that the format of this newsletter has changed. We hope you will find this shortened format, with less email text and links to our website with the extended versions of the items you are interested in, more helpful for quickly informing yourself about all that is going on at ISME.
Nicole Dubilier
Nicole Dubilier - ISME President
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#UnityInDiversity
The year 2020 was heavily interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Most gatherings and scientific conferences were cancelled, including ISME18, which was scheduled to take place in Cape Town, South Africa. Moreover, this year also saw a global uprising in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement starting in the United States and worldwide demonstrations advocating for racial justice. These events encouraged a group of early career researchers from the #UnityInDiversity committee and organize an ISME #UnityInDiversity virtual summit, on November 11-12 2020. The goal of the summit was to highlight the excellent research of diverse microbial ecologists from underrepresented communities around the world.
It was an exciting two days with over 1000 registered attendees. We were treated to outstanding keynote talks from Janelle Thompson (Nanyang Technological University Singapore), Karine Gibbs (University of California Berkeley, and Harvard University, USA) and Thulani Makhalanyane (University of Pretoria, South Africa), which covered topics ranging from SARS-CoV-2 detection in wastewater, to polar microbiology, and bacterial collective behaviours. Other highlights included 21 invited talks, 10 short talks selected by anonymous judging of the best abstracts, and an interactive poster session. Thanks to our generous sponsors, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the ISME Journals, we were able to award eight vouchers to cover the costs of open access publication fees in the ISME journals. Congratulations also go to our three main poster prize winners, Andrea Dos Santos, from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, Arthur Prudêncio de Araujo Pereira from the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil, and Martin Saraceno from the IEGEBA (Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires, Universidad de Buenos Aires), Argentina.
The #UnityInDiversity virtual summit was attended by more than 750 participants, which clearly demonstrates the enthusiasm of our community for the unique format and focus of this summit. We hope that this event gives additional momentum to ISME’s continuing efforts to foster inclusivity at all levels and in all activities of the society. All talk recordings are available to ISME members and registered participants. Interested in de numbers check this report (link needs to be added)
The organizing committee would like to sincerely thank ISME for sharing our vision, and for providing tremendous support during the planning and running of this meeting.
ISME Communications and The ISME Journal
ISME Journal Editors-in-Chief update
Our new leadership team has been working to improve the way The ISME Journal operates. We’ve thanked several outgoing Senior Editors for their service and have welcomed new team members. Overall, the number of Senior Editors has increased to help reduce workloads and increase diversity of expertise. We have also focused on improving communications through regular update emails, welcoming feedback for improvement, and creating databases of Senior Editors and Editorial Board embers to help match manuscripts to editors and reviewers based on expertise. In addition, we have updated/revised ISME J web pages, journal template emails, and streamlined aspects of the manuscript submission process. We are introducing new conflict of interest guidelines for authors and reviewers, while also requesting that authors make sequence data available prior to review. We look forward to better celebrating the outstanding papers published in our journal each year, in addition to recognizing excellence in those who serve as peer reviewers, especially those on our Editorial Board. Stay tuned for updates as we finalize details for new yearly awards that will help better highlight the amazing discoveries we publish each year and acknowledge the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. In order to improve the author experience, our Editor in Chief team has worked closely with Senior Editors and reviewers to ensure rapid processing of manuscripts submitted to The ISME Journal. Regardless of outcome, we are committed to ensuring that all manuscripts are offered rapid handling, careful decisions, and constructive feedback. We are working closely with ISME Communications to ensure that manuscripts find the best possible journal home within our two society journals. With 2020 drawing to a close, and looking forward to all that 2021 has to offer, we are eager to welcome exciting new microbial ecology discoveries that ISME members will send our way for consideration. Please keep us in mind for your best work! We wish our fellow society members a restful end to a difficult year and a productive beginning to 2021.
ISME Communications Editors-in-Chief update
At ISME Communications exciting developments keep rolling in as the journal has officially been launched in October 2020 with manuscripts being submitted directly to ISME Comms as well as being transferred from the ISME Journal. Our team at ISME Comms is rapidly being assembled, and we are now fully operational with the addition of Senior Editors and Editorial Board members. Being closely aligned with ISME J, recent improvements with respect to the submission process and templates for the editorial process, as well as setting up databases with keywords for Senior Editors and Editorial Board members have been directly implemented for ISME Comms from the very start. Furthermore, we are developing a strategy to showcase the unique signature of ISME Comms in online issues in 2021, highlighting the scope of this new journal, which includes advances in methodological and computational approaches in microbial ecology. We look forward to evaluating your exciting research for the upcoming issues of ISME Comms.
We are very honored to announce that ISME is one of the winners of this year's International Congress and Convention Incredible Impact Awards for our ISME17 meeting in Leipzig, Germany in 2018. Thank you ICCAWorld and BestCitiesGA for this Award!
The winners of the ISME/IWA BioCluster Award2020 have been announced! The International Water Association (IWA), in partnership with ISME, is pleased to announce the winners of the ISME/IWA BioCluster Award 2020:
- The Grand Prize has been awarded to Prof. Thomas Curtis (University of Newcastle, UK)
- The Rising Star Award has been awarded to Dr. Fangqiong Ling (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)
More than 50% of the microbial phyla in genome taxonomy databases lack a cultured representative. Although these genome sequences unambiguously delineate microbial taxa, they cannot be formally named under the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes due to the requirement for a pure-culture type strain. ISME is therefore establishing a nomenclature code for unculturable organisms, an initiative called UnCode.
There are two important developments we would like to highlight. First, a draft of the code is in development, and will be available for comment in 2021. Second, we are pleased to announce that two community-wide workshops on a Path forward for naming the uncultivated will take place in 2021. We seek to have active participation across the international community of microbiologists, including all career stages and diverse backgrounds. We hope to see many different subdisciplines well represented, including but not limited to systematics, biomedical microbiology, microbial ecology, bioinformatics, taxonomy, microbial systems science, and microbial genomics. Workshop 1 is “Practical barriers to naming uncultivated microorganisms”, and Workshop 2 is “Path forward to implementation and adoption of the UnCode”. The dates will be announced soon, but we hope many of you will contribute to both workshops in early February 2021!
The past few months have been a little quieter than usual in the Ambassador Program, likely a consequence of the hectic lead up to the end of the year combined with ongoing disruptions to work life and meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless, we have seen a number of promotional, networking and training activities including the completion of the Blue Think conference led by Dr. Rodrigo Costa, our Ambassador in Portugal, and two computational biology workshops for metagenomic analysis run by Prof. Rup Lal, our Ambassador in India. We have also supported a number of initiatives for 2021 including workshops on 'Phylogenomics' in Costa Rica, 'Amplicon and Metagenomic Sequencing' in South Africa and an ISME regional meeting in Africa scheduled for August 2021.
Members, the ISME Ambassador program exists to help our diverse membership grow the field of microbial ecology and expand the reach of ISME globally. Please take a moment to check out the activities on the ISME website and familiarise yourself with the Ambassador for your region, as the first point of contact for ISME support of local initiatives.
We thank the Ambassadors for their efforts throughout 2020 and wish you all the very best for 2021.
To check your current status of membership, please log onto our website with your account and look for your last order status, which will tell you when your 1 or 2 year membership will expire.
If you are still deciding whether or not to renew, or just haven't gotten around to it yet, please remember that with ISME membership you can:
- Get a registration fee discount for our upcoming symposium
- Become part of a global network and community where you can easily connect with your peers
- Advertise your events and jobs on the ISME website
- Acces our journals, The ISME Journal and ISME Communications
We hope that you will take the time to renew your membership and remain part of our ISME community. It couldn't be easier - just follow these two steps:
- Create a new account or log in to your existing ISME account using your username and a password (you can always reset your password if you don't remember it),
- Choose the membership type that suits your wishes, add it to your shopping cart and proceed to check out.
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