Biophysical Society Welcomes New Executive Officer

January 2019 Bulletin

Highlights from this month.

Nominations Now Open for 2020 Society Awards

The Biophysical Society is accepting nominations for its 2020 awards now through May 1, 2019. Awards to be bestowed in 2020 include:

NIH’s Francis Collins Expresses Concern over Epic Scientific CRISPR Misadventure

On November 28, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Francis Collins expressed deep concern about He Jiankui’s announcement, presented at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, describing his efforts using CRISPR-Cas9 technology on human embryos.

NSF Lifts Submission Cap for BIO Directorate

On September 27, Joanne Tornow, Acting Assistant Director for the Biological Sciences (BIO), National Science Foundation (NSF), unveiled reforms to the BIO division’s grant/solicitation process. BIO proposed placing caps on the number of annual grant submissions from a single principal investigator (PI) (or co-PI) to its various programs.

Biophysical Journal Selects Paper of the Year for 2018

The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Bin Xu and Alexandra Jilkine, University of Notre Dame, have been selected as the winners of the Biophysical Journal Paper of the Year Award for 2018. Their winning paper is titled “Modeling the Dynamics of Cdc42 Oscillation in Fission Yeast.” The paper was published in the February 6, 2018, issue of Biophysical Journal.

Open Access – Surveying the Landscape

By now the science community is well aware of Plan S, the initiative by a group of European government funding agencies to ensure that by 2020 all authors whose research is funded by the now 17 signatory countries only publish in open access journals that abide by the ten rules of Plan S. A brief article on this subject appeared in the November issue of the BPS Bulletin (Page 5).

A Journal for All Biophysics

As the journal of the Biophysical Society, the Biophysical Journal serves a diverse and multi-discipline research community of authors and readers. It needs to reflect the mission to publish “…work that elucidates important biological, chemical, or physical mechanisms and provides quantitative insight into fundamental problems at the molecular, cellular, and systems and whole-organism levels.

Biophysicist in Profile

Jung-Chi Liao

Jung-Chi Liao studied mechanical engineering as an undergraduate at National Taiwan University in Taipei. He was interested in mechanical vibration, so following his graduation he went to MIT to pursue a PhD working on understanding fluid-structure interaction of oil drilling pipes with Kim Vandiver.

Jennifer Pesanelli became the new Executive Officer of the Biophysical Society on January 2, 2019. Pesanelli comes to the Society from Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) where she was Deputy Executive Director for Operations and Director of Publications. She had been with FASEB since 1997 where she held many leadership roles.

The selection of Pesanelli follows a nationwide search led by Sterling Martin Associates, Inc., and an internal committee consisting of Society officers, members of Council, and one outside (non-BPS) scientific Society executive.

“After a six month search full of incredibly talented candidates, the Biophysical Society has named Jennifer Pesanelli as the new Executive Officer, succeeding Ro Kampman who retired after 21 years with the BPS. Jennifer’s experience and skills will continue to move the Society forward with congeniality and vision. We are delighted to welcome her to the BPS,” said Angela M. Gronenborn, President of the Society.

In addition to overseeing business operations at FASEB, Pasanelli led the Federation’s association management company, and brings to BPS strong strategic planning and management experience as well as a background in publications. She is a Certified Association Executive and was President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing in 2017–2018.

“I am excited and honored to serve as the next Executive Officer for the Biophysical Society, “ said Pesanelli. “The legacy of Ro Kampman is a strong and successful organization. I look forward to working with the members and staff to build on the great work that has already been done, ensuring continued success and a thriving Biophysical Society.”

Ro Kampman, who had been the BPS Executive Officer since January 1998, retired at the end of 2018 (see September BPS Bulletin). She will be splitting her time between Maryland and California and is looking forward to traveling and time with her family.

Pesanelli looks forward to meeting Society members and leaders at the upcoming Annual Meeting in Baltimore.