SIMB 2015 Annual Meeting Welcome Letter
It is my pleasure to invite you to join us for the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology, August 2-6, in Philadelphia, PA, or Philly, or even the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ to its friends. The annual meeting is an excellent opportunity to hear about cutting edge science, to present your own research, to catch up with colleagues and meet new ones, and to explore diverse topics of interest. Whether you are an academic, industrial, or government employee, a student, established researcher, or retiree, the 65th annual meeting of SIMB will have something to offer you.
The meeting starts on Sunday, August 2, with a bang with a new event: the SIMB Science Slam. Students, postdocs, and young investigators will present the essence of their work in a brief dynamic presentation. The Science Slam is a short presentation competition in which scientific topics, research results, latest technologies, etc. are presented via visual and other means. Each presenter will have 5 minutes total to enter the stage and fascinate, captivate, stun, or otherwise impress the audience. The audience will judge the presentations and at the end, someone will be crowned the “Master of the SIMB Slam.” This rapid fire Science Slam will be composed of 25 presenters who will be chosen from accepted poster submissions to present their work on a maximum of three slides, in five minutes. There will be no questions and no comments. We hope this new format will imbue the meeting with a sense of excitement and set the stage for rich scientific discussions for the remainder of the conference. The Science Slam will lead into the traditional start of the meeting – the keynote address.
The technical program will feature sessions in the five traditional SIMB focus areas: Biocatalysis, Environmental Microbiology, Fermentation & Cell Culture, Natural Products, and Metabolic Engineering. Representatives in each of these areas comprise the Program Committee.
This committee has recruited outstanding conveners who are lining up speakers in areas such as data and model-driven approaches to metabolic engineering, enzymes from extreme environments, functional metagenomics, biologics-delivering innovation to industry and patients alike, successful scale-up of microscale results, natural product chemical ecology and evolution, among a host of others. A special session in honor of David T. Gibson’s contributions to microbial aromatic hydrocarbon metabolism is also planned. Please review the list of session topics and conveners to learn of other areas of interest for the meeting.
In addition to a stellar technical program, we will host an outing to explore aspects of the historic City of Brotherly Love, so check back to the website for more details soon. The Banquet and 5K run are also highlights of the annual meeting. Opportunities for networking and engaging in stimulating scientific discussions are almost limitless during the meeting and I hope this welcome has piqued your interest.
Come join us in this city where centers of intellectual life were formed including: the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (1787), the Academy of Natural Sciences (1812), and the Franklin Institute (1824)… or you can just come for the current science, the comradery, and the cheesesteak!
Sincerely,
Joy Doran-Peterson
Professor of Microbiology & Director Master of Biomanufacturing and Bioprocessing Program
University of Georgia, Athens, GA