As usual, the ISME office is very busy, with much activity focused on the upcoming ISME18 in Cape Town, South Africa, August 9-14, 2020.  But that's not all that that's going on, so please read on! 

1^st ISME Latin America Congress

In one of the very first ISME-sponsored regional events, the 1^st ISME Latin America meeting took place in Valparaiso Chile this September 11-13^th 2019, at the Technical University Federico Santa Maria. (The meeting was also co-sponsored by the Agouron Institute, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Chilean Society for Microbiology, Conicyt, and several South American Universities).  The ISME-LA scientific sessions were fantastic and internationally represented, covering a broad array of central topics in Microbial Ecology.  The sessions highlighted well all the great science going on in microbial ecology in Latin America.  Sessions included focus on biogeochemical cycles, evolutionary dynamics in microbial communities, human microbiome ecology, microbial natural products, and ocean and terrestrial microbiomes and metagenomics. Thanks to the strong leadership of the Local Organizing Committee and their leadership (Chair and co-Chair, Mónica Vásquez and Michael Seeger), and the entire LOC and ISME Ambassadors in Latin America who pooled resources to help make the meeting an extremely successful event.  Latin American countries that participated included Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay.  The scientific, logistical, and social success of the 1^st ISME Latin America sets the bar very high indeed for future such meetings, and presents a great model for how similar events might be structured in the future. Hats off and a big thanks to Nicole Webster (the ISME Ambassador Program Director), and Colin Murrell (the ISME past President), for laying the groundwork over the past several years that helped ensure the success of this great regional event.

Early Career Scientist Committee and Symposium 2020

Plans are now also underway for further empowering early career scientist ISME members and facilitating their engagement in ISME activities,  leadership, communications and events.  To this end, a newly composed ISME Early Career Scientist Committee (ISME ECSC) will be inaugurated and initiated at the ISME18 meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, in August 2020.  The ISME ECSC is intended to represent and engage all ISME early career scientists (defined loosely as members pre-Ph.D., or post-doctorates within 10 years of Ph.D. completion, pre-tenure). Dr. Jillian Petersen of the University of Vienna has agreed to Chair this group during its first three years.  As Chair, Jill will attend the ISME International Board meetings to represent the interests of ISME early career scientists, and help to guide the group in enabling new opportunities for ISME early career scientists.  While there are many possibilities moving forward that can be guided and led by the ISME ECSC along with ISME early career membership, a few possibilities include:

•  Organizing and leading pre- or post- ISME meeting hands-on methods workshops, mini-courses, topical sessions of interest to ISME Early Career Scientists. 

•  Fostering international networking with special focus on reaching out to under-represented countries.

• Establishing information exchange on microbial ecology opportunities like summer courses, graduate schools, research training groups or exchange programs, that might be of useful for ISME early career scientists. 

•  Establishing blogs and/or posts on the ISME website,  targeting other interests of ISME early career investigators. 

•  Establishing webinars, Slack channels or other video and communication forums, to help link communications between ISME ECS members around the globe.

The ISME Executives and ISME International Board are looking forward to working with Jill, the ISME ECSC, and all ISME early career scientists in coming years, to further advance a bright and globally shared future for our evolving discipline.

Yours truly,​

Ed DeLong - ISME President ​   

ISME Ambassador funding was provided to Rodrigo Costa, Ambassador to Portugal to support travel costs for keynote speaker Nikos Kyrpides to the BAGECO 15 meeting in Lisbon.

ISME Ambassador funding was provided to Tanvir Rahman, Ambassador to Bangladesh to undertake a workshop on Stable Isotope Probing and Metagenomics.

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Thank you to everyone who voted for the Cover Competition. Congratulations to Robin Tecon,    ETH Zurich.  He will be awarded an ISME membership. 

“Scanning electron microscope image of soil microorganisms from a pasture near Zurich, Switzerland.  Soil samples were hydrated with diluted tryptic soy broth and incubated at fixed matric potential (-2  kPa)  for a week prior to examination. Conception, sampling, and lab work by Robin Tecon, Hannah  Kleyer and Dani Or - Soil and Terrestrial  Environmental Physics at ETH Zurich (www.step.ethz.ch). SEM   preparation, image acquisition and coloring by Anne Greet Bittermann - Scientific Center for Optical and   Electron Microscopy at ETH Zurich (www.scopem.ethz.ch)."