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The GSA election is underway. Thank you to those members who have already voted. Those members who have not yet voted for 2013 officers and members of the Board of Directors will continue to receive e-mail reminders with your registered voter code. Be a part of GSA’s future. Please vote before the deadline, Friday, October 19, 2012 at 11:59 p.m.
GSA has joined with the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) to challenge our members to take action to highlight the research work you do to elected officials and the public. During Advocacy Week, October 1-5, 2012, we hope you will help GSA and ASCB emphasize the importance of research by joining together with the “We are Research” campaign; it can be as simple as taking a picture of your lab or talking to your neighbors about what you do.
GSA Awards
and Opportunities
Hurry! The deadline -- Friday, September 21, 2012
-- is fast approaching for nominating your colleagues for the
2013 GSA awards that honor outstanding contributions in the field of genetics and genetics education. The awards are:
Attention Undergraduates! The GSA is now accepting applications for the
GSA Undergraduate Travel Awards to attend meetings held
between December 1, 2012 and May 30,
2013. This application process also includes the
Victoria Finnerty Undergraduate Travel Award for the
2013 Drosophila Research Conference. Applicants
must be GSA members who are attending a GSA-sponsored conference to present their research.
Deadline for submission: Friday, September 28, 2012. (Note: There will be a second round of applications for conferences that occur June 1–December 31, 2013.)
Grad Students & Postdocs: Applications for the first round of 2013 DeLill Nasser Awards for Professional Development in Genetics are being accepted until Tuesday, October 16, 2012.
Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers may apply for this
$1000 travel award to attend
any national or international meeting or to enroll in a laboratory course occurring between January 1 and June 30, 2013. (Note: There will be a second round of applications at the start
of 2013 for travel to meetings or courses that take place July 1–December 31, 2013.)
Volunteer judges are needed for
GSA-sponsored awards that will be presented to students at
SACNAS 2012 in Seattle, Washington, Thursday, October 11 to Saturday, October 13, 2012.
Please complete
this form to register as a judge. GSA members who already plan to attend this conference or members for whom this conference is in their local area, are especially
encouraged to participate.
GSA
Conferences
The deadline for
abstract submissions for the 5th Strategic Conference of Zebrafish Investigators (SCZI),
January 19-23, 2013 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in
Pacific Grove, CA, is Tuesday, October 16, 2012. Principal investigators (PIs) are encouraged to
submit their abstracts,
register for the meeting and
submit housing reservations to this limited-attendee meeting for senior researchers.
The
abstract submission site for the 27th Fungal Genetics Conference, March 12-17, 2013 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, CA, is now open. To view the
preliminary program, visit the
website.
The GSA
Journals
Read the September issue of
G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics,
which features 16 original research articles
that include studies in cattle, sitka spruce, yeast, nematodes, mice, Drosophila, and trout.
In its September issue, the journal GENETICS launched a new “Toolbox” series of reviews that describe
resources—both practical and intellectual—available
for the study of less commonly used experimental organisms.
Read the first Toolbox
article by Stolfi and Christiaen, which describes the experimental tools available
for studying the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, an increasingly popular organism for developmental biologists.
Members in
the News
Congratulations to GSA member
Marty Chalfie, who along with Roger Tsien and Osamu Shimomura were among those receiving an inaugural “Golden Goose”
award, a program conceived by Congressman Jim Cooper (D-Tenn)
to demonstrate the benefits of federally funded scientific research that has resulted in great benefits to society. The trio
won the award for their discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein as a research tool, which has “led to numerous medical research advances and to methods used widely by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries” and for which they won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008.
Three of six teams selected to receive
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)
Collaborative Innovation Awards, a $40 million investment by HHMI over the next four years to support potentially transformative team research,
include GSA members as either the lead investigator or as collaborators. GSA members who are team leaders are:
Norbert Perrimon (Harvard Med Sch), and Danny Reinberg (NYU), whose project includes two GSA member collaborators,
Shelley Berger (Univ of Penn) and Anandasankar Ray
(UC-Riverside). GSA member James Wilhelm (UCSD) is a collaborator on another project.
Three GSA members are among the 40
Vision and Change Leadership Fellows selected as members of the
PULSE (the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education) program, a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation, HHMI and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that
will recommend models for improving life sciences education for undergraduate students. Congratulations to
David Marcey (California Lutheran Univ),
Kathryn Miller (Wash Univ of St. Louis) and
Jo Anne Powell-Coffman (Iowa State).
GSA member Hugo Bellen will receive the
2012 Gill Award from the Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science at Indiana University Bloomington. In addition to receiving $25,000 and a plaque, Bellen will discuss “Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS)” at the
2012 Gill Symposium next month.
Career
Development
Graduate students and postdocs have a
new free online tool to help you “develop a step-by-step plan for reaching” your “career goals,” called
myIDP
(Individual Development Plan). Developed by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the Medical College of Wisconsin, UCSF, AAAS, and
Science Careers, with support from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, myIDP provides trainees with
exercises to assess their career skills, interests and values, and provides
resources for 20 common scientific career paths.
Policy
Congress is expected to pass a
continuing resolution (CR) this week which would keep the federal government operating through March 27, 2013. A CR is needed because Congress has not yet passed federal appropriations for fiscal year 2013, which begins on October 1, 2012. Although the CR includes a 0.6% across-the-board increase in funding from current levels, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and federal agencies are expected to be
very conservative in committing resources because of the looming dramatic effect of sequestration (see below).
In a
Congressionally-mandated report issued last week,
OMB has detailed how the automatic, across-the-board cuts known as sequestration will impact each federal agency as of January 2, 2013. Unless Congress agrees to a new deficit reduction plan, the agencies which support the research of many GSA members would see their
budgets cut by 8.2% from current funding levels. This would mean reductions of more than
$2.5 billion for NIH, $570 million for NSF, $400 million for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and $58 million for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food & Agriculture research and education activities.
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September Issue
GENETICS
September Issue
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