SERnews

November 6 2023

SER Presidents Message

I had planned to use this president’s message to describe strategies for getting the most out of a conference. But then I had an email from Dr. Nedghie Adrien, President of SER’s Student and Postdoc Committee. Her words made me reflect on the pain that violence is causing in so many places worldwide, close to home and far away. Although I don’t study violence prevention, I have been thinking about violence for decades. Recent events have rekindled those thoughts. Personally, I find it challenging to focus when the world is suffering. Just over two months ago, on my very own campus, a faculty member was killed by a graduate student. That senseless killing occurred in my son’s building, where he usually spends his days doing his graduate work in chemistry. Fortunately, for him and our family, that day, he was working from home. Still, I can’t help but think about what comes next—when, where, how. And global conflicts also weigh heavily. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, 27 global conflicts are ongoing. In other words, over 10% of the world’s countries are involved in some form of armed conflict. For most of the past 20 years, I have worked […]

September 9 2019

SER President’s Message

Suzanne Bevan SERnews

I’m so honored to serve SER as President this year. I’m awed by the number of members who work mostly behind the scenes to make the Society a hub of learning, teaching, and collaboration. The shaping of SER meetings (note the plural) in 2020 are already underway. On Friday, March 6, 2020, our first SER Mid-Year meeting will feature Keynote Speaker Sonia Hernandez-Diaz and two symposia. To increase accessibility, it will be a live web-conference at no cost to SER members. The SER Board will meet at the end of this month to review symposium proposals for both the Mid-Year and the regular June meetings. It’s official: SER is growing! Although numbers had increased at the last few SER meetings, we weren’t ready to claim this as real growth because attendance depends to a certain extent on venue. When we last met in Minneapolis in 2012, 714 people attended; this year, we had 1147 attendees. Thankfully, our venue for SER 2020 in Boston has larger meeting rooms to accommodate our increasing numbers. I’d like to share with you a slide presented by Professor Shawnita Sealey-Jefferson at SER 2019. I know I wasn’t the only one in the room that was […]

May 29 2018

SPC President’s Message

Suzanne Bevan SERnews

Hello SPC members, Hope your school year finished up well, and that you are gearing up for an exciting SER Annual Meeting in Baltimore from June 19-22. It’s not too late to book your trip to the annual meeting, and SPC members receive discounted meeting registration! We are looking forward to seeing great research featured in the oral and poster sessions from our SPC members. The SPC is also holding a number of events that we hope you will be able to attend at the meeting: Speed Mentor Networking, Wednesday, June 20, 7:00 – 7:45 AM SER Student and Faculty Recruitment Fair, Wednesday, June 20, 12:00 – 1:00 PM SPC Business Meeting, Wednesday, June 20, 6:00 – 7:00 PM SPC Happy Hour, Wednesday, June 20, 7:00 PM Breakfast with the Experts, Thursday, June 21, 7:00 – 8:00 AM SPC Career Panel, Thursday, June 21, 12:00 – 1:00 PM Who wants to be an Epidemiologist?, Thursday, June 21, 12:00 – 1:00 PM You can find more details on all of these events here: https://epiresearch.org/annual-meeting/2018-meeting/student-and-postdoc-meeting-events/ Please note that the Speed Mentor Networking and Breakfast with the Experts events require advance registration, which is available at the above link. If you recently attended […]

May 29 2018

President’s Message

Suzanne Bevan SERnews

Andrew Olshan SER President Happy spring! As I have mentioned before, there are multiple new SER activities underway. I would like to call your attention to a new online initiative, called SER Forum. This venue will allow SER members can help each other answer questions that come up in our daily work around substantive and methodological topics in epidemiology. SER members may post questions online, and other members of SER will be contacted to provide a response to the question. The intent is for the questions to be specific and focused enough to be answerable in short paragraphs. Questions can focus on issues related to study design, sampling, measurement, causal inference, data analysis, or research area topics, among others. Responses will be provided within 5 days of the question being posted. The SER Forum can be found with the SERlibrary dropdown menu from the main SER webpage. We hope this forum will serve as a space where epidemiologists may help each other improve the study and practice of epidemiology. See you in Baltimore in just over a month! As always feel free to send any comments and suggestions about the society to me at andy_olshan@unc.edu