Intro from our President                                                                     

Our journal continues to flourish with increasing numbers of high quality submissions. The Chief Editors, Senior Editors and Editorial Board are all working hard to ensure that we maintain quality and provide feedback to authors in a timely manner. This month we have placed a well deserved thank you on the journals' homepage to all our reviewers. 

Please see an update from ISMEJ in a special section below.

The society is also exploring additional options for ISME Society memberships, including 4-year memberships. Unfortunatley we could not offer this for coming year due to some technical issues but we do have the 2-year memebrships in place. If this is an option that is of interest to you, please consider this during your membership renewal.

Our Ambassador Program is also thriving, with addition of several new ambassadors thanks to program director Nicole Webster. Please keep in mind that it is always possible to get ISME sponsorship for workshops and conferences by coordination with your local ambassador. A succesful example is given below in our ambassadors section, this time from Japan.

All ISME16 related news will from now on come separately in the ISME16 newsletter!

Finally, we welcome feedback from our society members regarding additional member benefits and activities. Please don’t hesitate to contact me, the ISME Office or other members of our Executive Board and your local Ambassadors if you have suggestions.

​
Janet Jansson
ISME President

The ISME Journal - a word from the publisher 

2015 has been a big year of change for us at NPG as we started the year with news of our joint venture with formally creating in May our newly merged company, Springer Nature.

This merger brings with it lots of additional benefits for our partners and journals; more sophisticated infrastructure and scale, more customers and breadth of penetration, increased global visibility and reach, more resources, and a new mobile optimised  publishing platform to name but a few.

However all of this won’t come quickly and so even though we will begin to discuss and introduce new elements, models and systems as we move into 2016, the objectives and goals of ISMEJ remain very firmly at the front of our minds and we go into 2016 with a robust and clear development plan to ensure continued success for the Journal.

It will be exciting and different and I will share progress as we move forwards, but one thing that won’t change is our commitment to ISME and the Journal which we launched back in 2007 together and which remains very close to us and something we are very proud of.

I look forward to seeing many of you in Montreal next August and wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year!

Pooja Aggarwal
Head of STM, Academic Journals Springer Nature

The Ambassadors Report

7th Japan-Taiwan-Korea International Symposium on Microbial Ecology
Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

This meeting aims to promote scientific exchange in the field of microbial ecology among Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We have held the symposium every year since we initiated it between Japan and Korea in 2009. Now the symposium is held based on the MOU among Japanese Society of Microbial Ecology, Taiwan Society of Microbial Ecology and The Microbiological Society of Korea.

The 7th JTK symposium was held on 17-19 October 2015 at Tsuchiura City Kijyo Plaza in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Tsuchiura City is located about 65 km north of Tokyo and along the western shores of Lake Kasumigaura, the second biggest lake in Japan. The venue, Kijo Plaza, is at the center of downtown Tsuchiura, facing a beautiful park of Tsuchiura Castle ruins. The symposium was a joint meeting with the 30th annual meeting of Japanese Society of Microbial Ecology (JSME). We had 616 participants including 59 delegates from outside of Japan. Detailed information including a program and abstracts are available in the symposium website.

The symposium started with a student activity and a young scientist session in the afternoon of the 17th October. In the student activity, international participants enjoyed the World Café style interactive workshop, exchanging mutual friendship. In the young scientist session, early career Japanese scientists organized the session and invited 3 young speakers from Japan, Taiwan and Korea. In the evening a fascinating keynote lecture was given by Prof. Janet K. Jansson, followed by a welcome reception tasting Hitachi Nest Beer (award-winning local beer) with great enjoyment. On the 2nd day there were 3 JTK sessions including 2 plenary talks and 8 invited talks given by speakers from Japan, Taiwan, Korea and USA. Also, the poster exhibition (about 100 posters in English) started and lasted for 2 days. A luncheon symposium was organized by the JSME Committee for the Promotion of Diversity and Gender Equality & JTK Woman Scientist Network. On the 3rd day the JSME sessions started. There were 3 English sessions in the morning and young scientist oral sessions in the afternoon. A banquet in the evening started with a Japanese traditional way of celebration, a so-called “Kagami-wari”. All the participants had a pleasant time.

We appreciate the financial support of the ISME Ambassador program. Travel expenses of invited speakers from Taiwan and Korea in the young scientist session were supported with this money. The support was also provided to another young invited speaker from Taiwan who gave a talk in the JSME session. Also, the financial support from the society journal Microbes and Environments was provided to invite keynote and plenary speakers from the USA.

An important agreement was made in the business meeting. The symposium name was changed into "Asian Symposium of Microbial Ecology" (ASME) to expand the activity into other Asian countries. The next 2016 symposium will be held at the National Taiwan University in Taipei.


Koji Hamasaki
ISME Ambassador Japan
 

ISME Office Messages

Since we will soon have regular updates on our symposium, ISME16 will from now on have its own newsletter, separate from the quarterly society newsletter you already receive. In the ISME16 newsletter you will find important dates, deadlines, updates on the scientific sessions and of course our social program.

For instance, did you know that we will include the conference party in the registration fee this time? That way every delegate can attend the party without having to purchase a ticket! 

All members are automatically subscribed to the ISME16 news updates and if all went well you received the first e-mail last Friday (unless you opted out with the link at the bottom of the newsletter, then you will not receive them anymore).

Finally, ISME is open for membership renewal, please visit our membership pages to purchase your 2016 (and if you wish 2017) memberships or contact our office if you need assistance. 

We wish you a wonderful December month. Until soon!


Sarash de Wilde
Head ISME Office

Coming Events in Microbial Ecology