Intro by the ISME President                                                                     

I am happy to announce and welcome Professor Ed DeLong from the University of Hawaii as our next ISME Vice President. He will start his term immediately after the upcoming ISME Conference.

I am also happy to report that our society is growing in numbers and that we are in a good financial state.  Therefore, I encourage you as members to consider applying to ISME for financial support for workshops and meetings or travel grants to ISME16. Please contact your local ambassador or the ISME office for assistance.

Furthermore we are excited to announce that this year the prestigious Tiedje Award will go to Sallie (Penny) W. Chisholm from MIT, USA! This award has its own special night during ISME16 with a wine reception for all delegates followed by an evening keynote lecture of the awardee.

Besides this we have yet another important society award announcement: we are pleased to inform you that the winner of the Young Investigators Award 2016 will be Gene Tyson from The University of Queensland, Australia. Also Gene will receive his award in Montreal!

We congratulate both recipients with this achievement! More information on this will follow soon on the conference website and in the conference newsletter. 

Finally, our ISME Journal continues to be at the forefront for microbial ecology science thanks to our excellent editorial team and our contributing authors. Note that, as ISME members, you are entitled to specific benefits, including reduced registration fees for attending our conference. 

I look forward to seeing you this summer in Montreal!

​
Janet Jansson
ISME President

The ISME Journal - cover competition

Submit your microbial artwork and win the ISMEJ cover competition! A new cover image for next years' issues of The ISME Journal is needed, will it be your artwork? Send in your best artwork before May 31st and perhaps your submission will be on next years' cover!

It is easy to join the game: During the months of April and May you can submit/send your images to our office (please find the guidelines below). Once the submission deadline is passed our jury (chief editors & editorial office) will select a top 3. These 3 finalists will be displayed at the ISME Booth this summer during the ISME16 conference in Montreal. All delegates are invited to cast their votes at the booth and the winner will be announced at the closing ceremony. And of course the winner receives a free ISME membership (2017) which includes 12 hardcopy issues of The ISME Journal (with their own artwork on the cover for a whole year)!

Artwork Criteria:
-It must be your own artwork.
-It must be unpublished (unless in ismej 2016).
-The image must reflect microbial ecology.
-No less than 450 dpi set at their required size in: eps or tiff format, CMYK colour setup.
-The preferred size is 210mm width and 90mm height.
-You are allowed to submit multiple images.

Where to send it to: Please mail your artwork directly to: office@isme-microbes.org with subject line: ISMEJ Cover Competition 2016. Feel free to use a file transferring tool like wetransfer.

How: The artwork file name(s) must be saved as: ISMEJ2016_your name_(and file number if you send multiple images). 
Example: ISMEJ2016_deWilde_1.tif . Do not forget to include a text file that contains your name, mail address, affiliation and a description of your image(s)!

Copyright: There is no copyright transfer for the winning image. The author will remain 100% owner. We do ask of the authors to name The ISME Journal as the source should the owner want to use the image elsewhere. 

Good luck!

  
Ian Head & George Kowalchuk
ISMEJ Editors-in-Chief

Ambassadors reports

The ISME Ambassador program was established to promote the discipline of microbial ecology and strengthen the ISME Society, Symposia and Journal. The program was recently expanded to include both senior and mid-career Ambassadors and now spans 46 different nations. Over the past 12 months ISME Ambassadors have been incredibly active, undertaking a range of local and regional activities including workshops, symposia, receptions, awards and exchanges. These Ambassador activities have helped to introduce the field of microbial ecology to a broad scientific community and strengthened interactions within regional microbial ecology communities.  

Recent highlights include Ambassador support for the IV Regional School of Microbiology in Uruguay, the Swiss Microbial Ecology Meeting, the Israeli Microbial Eco-genomics in Agriculture Meeting, the Joint Australian Microbiological Societies Workshop, the Microbiology Society in Ethiopia Meeting, the Canadian Society of Microbiology Meeting, the New Zealand Microbial Ecology Meeting, the Annual Genomics and Microbial Ecology Conference in South Africa, the Bogotá Microbial Meeting in Colombia and the 7th Japan-Taiwan-Korea International Symposium on Microbial Ecology. 

New Zealand Microbial Ecology Consortium Symposium v4.0

                      
February 2016, University of Auckland.
Full report can be read here.

The joint Japan-Taiwan-Korea meeting which included over 600 delegates is a splendid example of regional countries working together to promote microbial ecology and improve scientific exchange amongst early career researchers.  

If you have specific activities you believe would benefit from the Ambassador program, please contact your local Ambassador (details of which can be found at http://www.isme-microbes.org/about/ambassadors) or the program director Nicole Webster.


Nicole Webster
ISME Ambassador Program Director

ISME Office Update

2016 is going to be great! We have new members applying on a daily basis, students are sending in their travel grant applications, our events team is busy with the incoming abstracts and delegate registrations for ISME16 and the journal submissions increased again too.

All relevant information on ISME16 will be sent in a seperate newsletter/update (as there is simply so much to tell!) but we use social media too in case you need quick updates. 

I wanted to take this oppurtunity to introduce our new events assisitant Nina. Our previous assisitant Anne decided to start her PhD in ecology so I'm sure we'll see here soon again, one way or another. But luckily we now have Nina Koele to take over her role. Nina also is no stranger to the field of microbial ecology and just finished a PostDoc in Brazil.  She will join our team until after ISM16 and will mostly handle registrations and abstracts.

Besides Nina we have of course our very own Sabine van Wegen in the role of coordinator. Sabine has  already been with us over 6 years and knows our conference inside and out! She and Nina will be at your service in Montreal, feel free to approach them via e-mail or in Montreal if you have questions.

        
Nina Koele            Sabine van Wegen
Events Assistant  Events Coordinator 

I am preparing the agenda for the general members meeting this August and will again ask several people to present during this meeting so that you, as ISME member, can get a full overview of our society and its journal, what we have done in the last 2 years and our goals for the future. If there is something in particular you would like to see in these presentations or if you have specific questions for us then please let me know. Hope to see you there!

Have a great weekend everyone. 
You know where to find us. 


Sarash de Wilde
Head ISME Office

Events