SPC President’s Message

Greetings to all of the SER students and postdocs out there! I am both thrilled and honored to serve as your SPC president, and I hope you all are as excited for this next year as I am.  I’d like to give a BIG shoutout to Dr. Catherine Lerro for doing an amazing job as SPC President and for showing me the ropes over this last year. Fortunately for me, she’ll be sticking around on the SPC board for one more year. I also want to welcome our new SPC President-elect, Dr. Sharia Ahmed who two months in, is already knocking it out the park! We have a great mix of new and returning SPC board members who are eager to serve the needs of our community, you can learn all about them here. Don’t be afraid to drop us a line and say hello!

It’s been a difficult couple of years for everybody, and a really hard time to be a trainee. That’s why there couldn’t be a better time to remind ourselves what it means to be an academic community. The other members of the SPC board and I look forward to providing amazing programming, resources, and the best social/professional network the field of epidemiology has ever seen! Make sure you keep an eye on your inbox and the SERcalendar for up-to-date information on everything that is to come.

If you haven’t done so already, registration is open now for the fall SERdigital which will take place on November 20th. We’re super excited to welcome Dr. Thu Nguyen and Dr. Sandra Albrecht who will present in our session titled, “Infodemic Inoculation – Lessons Learned and Future Directions”. Also make sure to keep an eye out for information on the next SERjournal club, which will meet on October 20th.

And of course, it’s never too early to start thinking about the annual meeting (fingers crossed for an in-person in Chicago, June 2022). Submissions for the Tyroler Student Prize and the Lilienfeld Postdoctoral Prize Paper Awards open September 30th so now is the time to start planning your submissions. And for those in the throes of dissertating, don’t forget our amazing SER Student Dissertation Workshop; applications for the 2022 workshop will open November 5th.

That’s all I have for now but if you have something you’d like to add (suggestion for an event? topic you’d like to see covered in one of our programs?) please don’t hesitate to reach out. Like I said, I’m super excited for this coming year and I hope you are too.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and productive new academic year!

John R. Pamplin II

SER SPC President