Note from the president

Dear SBIC Members and JBIC Readers

The year 2020 will not be remembered fondly by most of the human race. Sadly, 2021 has started with mixed reviews as new, more aggressive strains of SARS-CoV2 are emerging, while hope for some relief from this global pandemic comes from the outstanding progress made on vaccine development. Over the past year, international conferences have been canceled, research progress has been stymied and, most important, lives have been lost. At the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, we have attempted to mitigate the damage that this new coronavirus has had on our membership while seeking to develop new opportunities to provide value to our members and enhance the study of metals in biology.

Our Past President, Sue Berners-Price, ably led the society through several major transitions including negotiating a new 5-year contract with Springer-Nature to publish JBIC, smoothing the transition to a new Editor-in-Chief (Nils Metzler-Nolte), moving the management of the society from FASEB to MCI, launching a new website through MemberClicks and developing a New Logo for the 25th Anniversary of the Society. With these foundational achievements, SBIC has been placed in a far superior position to weather the storm brought by the novel coronavirus. None-the-less, there still have been major obstacles to overcome over the past year and for our future. Many of the regional BICs (EuroBIC, AsBIC and LABIC) as well as related bioinorganic meetings were cancelled, postponed or presented in virtual formats that we were all previously unaccustomed to organizing or attending. Sadly, this trend continues as ICBIC20 in Adelaide, Australia has been postponed to 2023 and the subsequent conferences in California and England have been shifted to 2025–2027, respectively. As SBIC membership is highly correlated to meeting attendance and because of the hardships associated with the downturn in the global economy, we have experienced what is likely a temporary decrease in the size of our Society. For these reasons we have lowered and streamlined dues for the society in 2021 and will re-evaluate the dues structure for future years. Details for all these issues can be found on the new SBIC website (https://sbic.memberclicks.net/).

Despite these setbacks, one should not feel that the future of our field or our society is all doom and gloom. While many research programs had a temporary stoppage, most scientists have been able to return, at least in part, to the laboratory. This will allow students to progress to their degrees and new job opportunities to arise. It also will lead to a return to the previous level of productivity, which has understandably diminished for many these past 6 months, that we are accustomed. I encourage you to support JBIC, our society’s journal, by submitting high-quality manuscripts, refereeing articles and referencing the work published in this venue as these actions benefit our Society scientifically, economically and with enhanced prestige. Many meetings occurred in a highly successful manner in a virtual format. Our first virtual General Assembly, with a presentation by Chris Chang, was held in Oct 2020 and was well received. Those interested in this event as well as lectures from the electronic EuroBIC can see recordings on the SBIC website. Our Society is also supporting conference organizers through providing economic support, a Zoom subscription to disseminate lectures and also a platform to archive lectures on our website.

To obtain greater member input, we have organized a Presidential Commission (chaired by previous SBIC President Mike Hannon) to explore areas where SBIC should be more actively engaged in providing member benefit. We hope to develop several exciting new initiatives that will increase the participation of existing members as well as encourage the recruitment of young members to the society. We are also starting a major program to provide educational resources to our global bioinorganic community. We will serve both as an aggregator that provides to the public links to previously established educational resources that promote biological inorganic chemistry and special member resources such as lectures, flashcards and other materials that can be accessed solely by SBIC members. We also plan to document the history of our field and, specifically the people and events that led to SBIC and JBIC, that will be called Conversations in Biological Inorganic Chemistry. Finally, we hope to launch job resources that will benefit the younger members of our Society. Please visit the SBIC website to see the implementation of these new initiatives. Finally, I would like to announce that SBIC has agreed to host a virtual Biological Inorganic Chemistry meeting at some point during July/August 2021. Specific details will appear on the SBIC webpage, but we can say at this point that we would like to have a continuous presentation of seminars, posters and the general assembly over a 48 h period to serve our international community equitably and fully. The organizers of the meeting will be selected from members across all geographic regions of our community. We plan that this event will be made available free of a registration fee to all SBIC members. Again, check the SBIC webpage for updates and do not hesitate to contact us regarding any of these proposed programs with your suggestions.

I believe that despite these times of adversity, we should as a community be able to expand and enhance the impact of the Biological Inorganic Community across the world. SBIC hopes to be a leader in this endeavor. We hope that we count on your solidarity in these efforts.

Vincent L. Pecoraro

SBIC President 2020–2022

Note:

Similar text was published in the SBIC 01/2021 Newsletter.