Our Vice President welcomes new International Board Members

As we say farewell and thanks to retiring International Board Members Bill Mohn, Jim Fredrickson, Alex Worden and Esperanza Martinez Romero for all of their sterling work for ISME, we welcome four new ISME International Board Members who will bring a wealth of experience in a number of different research areas.

Mike Taylor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Mike’s research group investigates the ecology of microorganisms associated with diverse animal “hosts”.  Having worked extensively with marine sponge symbionts and the avian gut microbiota, his recent research has increasingly focused on the human microbiome.  Current research foci include the role of the gut microbiota in autism spectrum disorder and the interplay between host and sinus microbiota in chronic rhinosinusitis.  A range of molecular and cultivation-based approaches are employed for this work.

Kirsten Küsel, Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany.
Kirsten’s research group investigates a number of key biogeochemical cycles in the environment including oxidation and reduction of iron in acidic environments, nitrification in freshwater lakes and peatland soils and the cycling of volatile organic compounds, such as methanol and methyl chloride, in the environment. Another research focus is understanding subsurface carbon cycling and aquifer foodwebs, with a strong focus on autotrophy and on how autotrophy is linked to other elemental cycles such as the nitrogen and sulfur cycles.

Cecilia Alonso, Centro Universitario Regional Este, Universidad de la República, Uruguay.
Cecilia’ area of research is the microbial ecology of coastal aquatic systems, particularly transition zones, focussing on the ecophysiology of anaerobes in oxygenated environments and niche differentiation of microbes sharing resources, microbes that impact on climate change processes, and the microbial carbon pump. She also studies changes in the composition of aquatic microbial communities and trophic interactions between bacteria and eukaryotes (protists and protozoa) in aquatic systems at the molecular level using MAR-FISH, NanoSIMS and stable isotopes technologies.

Victoria Orphan, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, USA
Victoria’s research program spans the interface between environmental microbiology, geochemistry, and geology.   Through the integrated application of environmental ‘omics approaches, stable isotope analysis, and imaging, her group is characterizing the interspecies interactions and ecological physiology of environmental microorganisms linked to the cycling of methane, sulfur, nitrogen, and metals in deep-sea and extreme environments. 

As our society continues to grow, the ISME Board wants to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our members. To partly address this need we are launching a quarterly newsletter that will provide updates on several aspects of our society. For example, we will provide a short update on the ISME Journal from our Chief Editors. In addition, we will summarize the status of our growing ambassadors program. 

Planning for our next ISME Conference to be held in Montreal, Canada, from 21-26 August, 2016 is going full steam ahead. We already have a great list of keynote speakers and the program development is well underway. This newsletter will also provide an opportunity for updates on that conference as well as reports from other conferences and workshops that ISME co-sponsors.

As members, your feedback is highly valued. We hope that this newsletter will provide a valuable service. Please let us know if there is other content or information that you would like us to provide.

    
Colin Murrell
ISME Vice President

Ambassador Reports

Opportunities to Promote ISME and Microbial Ecology through the ISME Ambassador and Consul Program.

The ISME Ambassador Program is an important initiative designed to enhance regional promotion of the ISME Society, Meetings and Journal.  Currently, ISME Ambassadors representing 46 nations promote the society and encourage participation in ISME events, in addition to conveying the significance of our discipline to the wider community within their region. ISME Ambassadors facilitate cooperation between ISME and regional organizations across a diverse range of activities including the development and support of workshops, symposia, awards and exchanges. 

A recent addition to the ISME Ambassador Program has been the inclusion of Consuls, or junior ambassadors, who have been recruited to assist the Ambassadors with their regional efforts. These ISME Consuls are typically enthusiastic early to mid-career researchers with a keen interest in the advancement of the ISME and the development and promotion of the microbial ecology discipline within their nation.

I was recently appointed as the ISME Consul for Australia, which for a regular attendee at the ISME Symposia and a keen reader of the ISME Journal was an exciting opportunity to get further involved in the society. Through this position I have been able to work with the Australian ISME Ambassadors Nicole Webster (Australian Institute of Marine Science) and Andrew Holmes (University of Sydney) in promoting ISME and our research discipline within Australia.

One recent way that I was able to contribute to the goals of the ISME Ambassador program was by facilitating ISME support of a large microbiology symposium in Sydney. The JAMS (Joint Academic Microbiology Seminar) Annual Symposium is the highlight of the yearly calendar for a major microbiological organization that has rapidly developed and expanded since its inception in 2010. The brainchild of Federico Lauro, Ian Paulsen, Andy Holmes and Mike Manefield, JAMS is a Sydney-based, monthly seminar series that was developed to encourage interaction and collaboration among the microbiology community within the Sydney region. JAMS has since grown to include more than 400 members and now enjoys regular participation by microbial ecologists from across Australia.

The JAMS Annual Symposium, held at the Australian Museum, involved 100 delegates and was highlighted by invited plenary presentations by leading international microbial ecologists including: Colin Murrell (University of East Anglia, UK), Stefan Wuertz (Nanyang Technical University, Singapore), Lisa Moore (University of Southern Maine, USA), Elizabeth Dinsdale (San Diego State University) and Kathryn Holt (University of Melbourne, Australia). ISME sponsorship of this event provided valuable financial support to the symposium, including provision of the Student Poster Prize, which was awarded to Connie Ha from Sydney University.

Justin Seymour
ISME Junior Ambassador

A word from our Chief Editor

The ISME Journal has enjoyed another excellent year. With unprecedented advances in microbial ecology the journal continues to receive a steady stream of submissions documenting the most exciting and innovative work in the field. This first and foremost relies on our authors, who choose to submit their groundbreaking work to the journal, and our outstanding team of editors and reviewers who are essential in maintaining the standards of the journal.

With the growth of the journal we constantly seek to improve our performance and for that reason we have expanded our editorial board on which we rely for a large proportion of the reviewing effort that supports the journal. We would like to extend a warm welcome to our new EBMs; Martin Ostrowski, Irene Newton, Greg Caporaso, He Jianzhong, Cameron Thrash, Fernando Vega, Virginia Armbrust, Che Ok Jeon, Adrian Marchetti, Fumio Inagaki, Tatsuhiro Ezawa, Joy Watts, Yuichi Hongoh, Thomas Mock and Alexandre Jousset.

To increase the depth and breadth of expertise of our senior editorial team we would also like to welcome our new senior editors Angus Buckling and Steven Lindow.

In addition to the recruitment of new blood, we have also had departures. Jack Gilbert, after a number of years of tireless service to the journal, has stepped down as Senior Editor to lead the new journal mSystems. We wish Jack every success with this new challenge and look forward to seeing mSystems develop and grow under Jack’s expert guidance.

The annual event of journal benchmarking through the publication of Journal Impact Factors passed on June 18^th this year. We are pleased to report a modest increase in the journal’s Impact Factor to 9.3! This is excellent news and we would like to thank everybody who submitted, reviewed, edited and, of course read and made use of the research published in The ISME Journal for contributing to its continued success.

Ian Head
Chief Editor of The ISME Journal
 

Note from the Chair LOC16

The Local Organising Committee of ISME16 (LOC16) met with the ISME Executives and office last April. We spent several hours reviewing all the topics and speakers suggested by the LOC members. In the end we agreed on a list of 28 topics, which will allow to run 7 parallel sessions each day. For each topic, we suggested potential convenors, who are currently being invited to chair a session. When possible, special attention was taken for gender balance and geographic distribution. 

We are looking forward to the conference and we will give you a more elaborate update in the next newsletter after the summer break!

Richard Villemur
Chair ISME16

Message from the Office

A huge thank you to all of you who submitted your artwork for the ISMEJ Cover Competition! It took a while before the jury had selected a final top 3 but we succeeded in the end. All ISME members will soon get a voting link in their mailbox where they can select their favorite image!  

The 3 finalists are:

 
Erik Trempe - University of Copenhagen.
Coloured SEM image of the microbial life within the rare ikaite crystal matrix of the submarine Ikaite Columns of southwest Greenland. Submarine tufa columns formed geochemically by precipitates of ikaite crystals, constituting an extreme environment of high pH, low temperature and low light while harbouring a relatively diverse community including novel cyanobacteria strains, diatoms and heterotrophic bacteria. Filamentous cyanobacteria colored green, heterotrophic bacteria colored yellow, ikaite crystals colored light blue.  

Felix Goldschmidt - Eawag.
Confocal microscopy of bacterial colonies growing on agar plates. The bacteria were genetically engineered to construct synthetic cross-feeding communities and express different fluorescent proteins. The images show that simple ecological interactions can give rise to highly complex patterns. Image: Two Pseudomonas stutzeri strains cross-feeding nitrite.

Insa Bakenhus - MPI.
Confocal micrograph showing Bacteroidetes (red) and Gammaproteobacteria (green) in association with two crossing microalgae chains after phylogenetic staining (fluorescence in situ hybridization, FISH).

Enjoy your summer!

Sarash de Wilde
Head ISME Office
 

Coming Events in Microbial Ecology