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SER is the most member-focused and member-driven organization that I have encountered in my career. As we move to the end of September, our members have just wrapped up submitting their proposals for symposia, lunch sessions, and workshops. Soon, we will be setting the agenda for the annual meeting in Austin next June. I know of no other organization where the membership has so much input into the structure and content of their annual meeting. It’s much more common for a few committee members to determine what’s important and set the agenda and invite speakers. But we do it differently—in a remarkable and inspiring way. Our members, you, propose the content and speakers, and then the entire board works its magic to create the SER program. So, for those of you who have submitted proposals this year—thank you…and if you are unsuccessful, please try again next year. And for those of you who didn’t submit a proposal this year, it’s not too early to be thinking about SER in 2025. Remember that if you think the annual meeting doesn’t have enough content in a particular area, the solution is to submit a symposium proposal that addresses that gap! I’m excited […]

Hi everyone! Nedghie Adrien, signing in as your new Student & Post-Doc Committee (SPC) President. I’m following in the footsteps of Sharia Ahmed who has been a phenomenal leader. I’m glad she remains on as Past President so that I can continue to learn from her. I would also like to introduce our new SPC Chairs: Lisha Lin is joining Estela Blanco as our Education Co-Chairs; Morgan Wolff is joining as our Internal Affairs Chair, Ami Sedani is joining Ruby Barnard-Mayers as our Media Co-Chairs; and Taylor Mobley is joining Joëlle Atere-Roberts as our Program Co-Chairs. Domonique Reed is continuing as our Diversity and Inclusion Chair, and Alvin Thomas is our new President-Elect. A warm welcome to all our new and returning SPC Chairs! I look forward to working with all of you in the coming year. To students and postdocs, I want to emphasize that SPC is here as a resource for you. Over the last few years, I have spoken to many of you who have expressed curiosity and interest in SPC. As trainees, you became members of SPC when you joined SER. The SPC chairs work hard to implement programming that would serve all of you, but […]

Hello Students, Postdocs, and Epi Trainees! By the time you read this, we’ll be just days away from the SER Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon. Buckle up, there’s a lot to cover. First, navigating Portland on a budget. Trimet (https://trimet.org/home/) is the local public bus/streetcar/lightrail train system. At a minimum, it will take you directly from the airport to downtown near the conference hotel for just a few dollars. Portland public transit is used by everybody from business executives to high school students (who use public transit in lieu of school buses). Portland city planning intentionally discourages private vehicle use in favor of lower carbon options, so Trimet, bikeshare (https://biketownpdx.com/), or walking will often get you somewhere faster and always cheaper than a car. For cheap and delicious food in Portland, you want to google “food carts” or “food cart pods.” Trust me, eat all the delicious things. A final word on getting out and about in town, Portland is an incredibly dynamic and eclectic city. Expect to see people who move through the world differently than you’re used to. If someone is in crisis, call 911 and ask for Portland Street Response (https://www.portland.gov/streetresponse). Otherwise, the local ethos is to […]

Happy April! Hopefully, you and yours weathered well whatever extreme weather came your way—be they atmospheric rivers with nearly incessant rain, feet of snow, or sweltering heat. We ordered excellent June weather without any warranty to befit our 2023 Annual Meeting in Portland. Come what may, our Portland meeting is still on track to be our most popular, with the most submitted abstracts, symposia, workshops, posters, lunchtime sessions, and late-breaker sessions. The Board worked hard to open as many in-person and online presentation opportunities as logistically possible to accommodate the extraordinary volume and variety of high-quality submissions. To navigate the rich program with all these goodies, we will use an interactive online schedule with an accompanying mobile phone app that allows each attendee to select and save sessions of interest to their calendar. We will record several sessions for later on-demand viewing to alleviate the fear of missing out. We thank our colleagues at UC Berkeley for hosting an incredible U.S. Mid-Year Meeting in California with a roster of thought-provoking and timely presentations. Naturally, we are already soliciting hosts for the 2024 Mid-Year Meeting, keeping in mind that we want new locations outside our usual Annual Meeting locations. Our International Mid-Year Meeting in Mexico was […]