A letter from our President

Greetings from ISME!
I would like to take the opportunity to send some updates on behalf of our society. ISME is doing very well, both in turns of membership, conference attendance and our marvelous journal. This stems in part by the current interest and enthusiasm of the international research society in the growing discipline of microbial ecology. 

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.
 

Janet K. Jansson
ISME President

ISME Ambassadors Program update 

The ISME International Ambassador Program was established in 2006 to strengthen and promote the discipline of microbial ecology globally.  The program now spans 45 countries, recently expanding into Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Greece.  The program warmly welcomes new Ambassadors Tanvir Rahman, Enalkachew Wode-Meskel, Emilio Casamayor, Konstantinos Kormas, Lise Ovreas and Eduard Jurkevich and thanks outgoing Ambassador's Carlos Pedros Alio, Shimshon Belkin and Vigdis Torsvik for all their hard work in promoting the society within their respective regions. 

Another recent development is the expansion of the program to include Young Ambassadors who actively promote ISME activities among colleagues and members of their national microbiological societies.  In 2014-2015 the ISME Ambassador Program is sponsoring the Uruguayan Society for Microbiology Meeting, the Swiss Microbial Ecology Meeting, the Israeli Microbial Eco-Genomics in Agriculture Meeting, the Joint Australian Microbiological Societies Meeting and the Molecular Microbial Group Meeting in the UK.  Contact details for all Ambassadors can be found on the ISME website so we urge all members to contact the program director or the Ambassador for your region if you have a passion for promoting microbial ecology and would like to become actively involved in this exciting ISME initiative.

Nicole Webster
ISME Ambassador Program Director

The ISME Journal Progress

Mirroring progress in the field for microbial ecology, the ISME Journal has continued to grow and develop. ISMEJ remains THE place to publish the most exciting advances in microbial ecology.

After having helped to steer the journal from its inception to the success it is today, Mark Bailey stepped down this year as co-editor-in-chief. Mark’s contribution to the journal cannot be underestimated, but the continued success of the journal is in excellent hands with the installation of Ian Head as the new co-editor-in-chief. Janet Jansson also had to step down as reviews editor to take up her ISME presidential duties, and Jim Prosser has now become the new reviews and commentaries editor.

With the increased traffic to the journal, we have again found it necessary to expand our team of editors at ISMEJ. Exciting additions to the team include Jennifer Biddle, Andy Holmes, Laurent Philippot, Tom Schmidt, Matt Sullivan and Kazuya Watanabe. The input of our growing Editorial Board also deserves special mention, as it is our EB members who take up a sizeable proportion of the efforts demanded by peer review for ISMEJ. Despite the importance of the ISMEJ team, the success of the journal continues to stem from the excellent quality of submissions to the journal. So, continue to send us your very best and most exciting work, and we will do our utmost to keep bringing you interesting and inspiring issues of ISMEJ every month.  

George Kowalchuk
Chief Editor of The ISME Journal
 

The LOC members are actively working on the organization of ISME16. We had our first meeting last January to discuss on the different tasks by the members: Two committees were formed: sponsorship, party and social events. We discussed about the different sources of revenue from the private and academic sectors, and also the party venues and excursions. However, the main discussion was about the potential topics and chairpersons that should be presented at the symposium.

The website is open (www.isme-microbes.org/isme16). You will see that four keynote speakers accepted our invitation: Siv Andersson, (Uppsala University, Sweden), Charles Greer, National Research Council, Canada, Richard Lenski, Michigan State University, USA, and Roman Stocker, MIT, USA.

The next meeting will held April 13 to 14 in Montreal with the ISME executive board members and staff to discuss the different topics and speakers to invite.

Richard Villemur
Chair ISME16

Message from the ISME Office

Want to host ISME18? You can, we are now open for bids! Until October 11th 2015 you can submit an expression of interest (EOI). How? Please visit our website at http://www.isme-microbes.org/bids and you will find all the information there!

Sarash de Wilde
Head ISME Office
 

Membership Benefits

Membership includes online access to The ISME Journal.
For 30 euro extra you can have a monthly hardcopy of the journal as well (only available for regular members and not student members.
If students want a monthly hardcopy of The ISME Journal they must choose and pay a regular membership).
NPG offers to ISME members a 50% discount to one year subscription to any other Nature journal like: Nature Reviews Microbiology.
ISME Members will benefit from reduced registration fees at the biennial ISME Symposia.
Access to (keynote) talks of previous ISME symposia (starting at 2014).
Student members, Low income country members and retired members get reduced fees and an online subscription to the online journal (proof of status is requested).
Eligibility to vote for (or stand elect as)  Board Members.
Free job postings at our highly used job page or event postings on our event page.
Possibility to submit bids for future ISME symposia.
Get sponsorship funds for your local workshop or meeting.
Access to ISME online Membership directory to find your peers.

Coming Events in Microbial Ecology