ASCB Newsletter - March 1999

We have a winner!

Gordon Chan of Fox-Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia was selected at random from among respondents to a questionnaire at the ASCB's 38th Annual Meeting last December in San Francsico. He won free registration for the 39th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

The ASCB Public Policy Committee solicits nominations for the 6th annual ASCB Public Service Award for outstanding national leadership in support of biomedical research.
Past awardees are J. Michael Bishop, Senator Tom Harkin, Congressman John Porter, Marc Kirschner and Congressman George Gekas

Any ASCB member may submit a nomination.

Send letter of nomination to:

The American Society for Cell Biology
Public Policy Committee
c/o Elizabeth Marincola
ASCB Executive Director
9650 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20814

Letters of Nomination must be received by March 31.

NLM Honors Blackwell's Graduation
The National Library of Medicine in Bethesda is currently displaying an exhibit to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first American woman to receive an M.D. degree. The exhibit, on display through June and titled "That Girl There is Doctor in Medicine," is open to the public 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday; 8:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m. on Thursday; and 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. on Saturday. For more information.

Minorities Affairs Committee Histochemical Society Workshop

Travel Awards Call for Applications
The Workshop on Microscopy of Living Cells and Tissues, is on April 17, 1999 at the annual meeting of the Histochemical Society from April 16-18, 1999 at the Hyatt Regency HoPhone: in Bethesda, MD. The Histochemical Society meeting is immediately followed by the Experimental Biology Meeting in Washington, D.C. from April 17-21, 1999.

Awards of up to $600 are offered through an ASCB MAC NIH/NIGMS/MARC grant for minority graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty.

To apply, access an application from the ASCB Website.

For more information, contact Daniel Friend, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Smith Building, Room 628, 1 Jimmy Fund Way, Boston MA 02115, Fax: (617) 525-1310.

Other ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee Program Deadlines

Marine Biological Laboratories Course Application: March 2, 1999
Information and application forms available
Select "Research/Education"

Friday Harbor Laboratories Summer Quarter Application: March 1, 1999
Information and application forms available online

ASCB/MAC Visiting Professor Summer, 1999, Application: March 1, 1999
Information and application forms available online

These ASCB MAC programs are funded through a National Institutes of Health

NIGMS Minorities Access to Research Careers grant.

The ASCB Education Committee solicits nominations for The Bruce M. Alberts Award for Distinguished Contributions to Science Education

The nomination letter should include a description of the nominee's innovative and sustained activities with particular emphasis on the local, regional and/or national impact of the nominee's activities.

Send letter of nomination, letters of support and CV if possible to:
The American Society for Cell Biology
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814

Nominations must be received by April 30.

19th Annual EB Wilson Award Call for Nominations
The ASCB solicits nominations for the 1999 E.B. Wilson Award, the Society's highest honor for significant and far-reaching contributions in cell biology. Recent past awardees are James Darnell & Sheldon Penman (1998), John Gerhart (1997), Donald Brown (1996), Bruce Nicklas (1995), Barbara Gibbons & Ian Gibbons (1994), Hans Ris (1993), Shinya Inoue (1992), S. Jonathan Singer (1991) and Morris Karnovsky (1990).

Nominators must be members of the ASCB but nominees need not be. The nominating package should include the candidate's CV and no fewer than three and no more than five letters of support.

Nominations should be received by March 31, 1999, and be sent to:

Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Chair
1999 E. B. Wilson Selection Committee
The American Society for Cell Biology
9650 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20814-3992

For questions about the Award, contact the ASCB at (301) 530-7153.

Call For Education Initiative Proposals
Each morning of the Annual Meeting, the ASCB Education Committee presents an Education Initiative Forum during the coffee break between the scientific symposia. The Forum presents programs of interest to scientists and educators.

ASCB members with topics and/or speakers of potential interest for presentation at the Education Initiative Forum during the 39th ASCB Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. are invited to direct suggestions to ASCB Education Committee member Chris Watters at Middlebury College, Department of Biology, Middlebury VT 05753. (Phone: 802-443-5433; Fax: (802) 443-2072.

1999 Summer Research Programs in Biology for Undergraduates Nationwide
This resource list, compiled by ASCB Minorities Affairs Committee member Joseph Hall, emphasizes programs for minority students, but the list includes information for all undergraduates. Students are encouraged to consider all programs for which they are qualified. For more information, visit the ASCB website.

ASCB Placement Service

Information on potential employers and limited information on registered candidates are now available on the ASCB website.

Detailed candidate information is available in the 1998 Candidate Packet, which has information sheets on over 200 candidates who registered with the ASCB Placement Service before and during the 1998 Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Information provided includes name, address, type of work desired, citizenship, date of availability, academic training, professional experience, specialities, and publications. Candidate information is available upon request at no extra charge to employers who participated in the 1999 ASCB Placement Service. Non-profit employers who did not participate in the 1998 ASCB Placement Service may purchase a Candidate Packet for $75; commercial non-participating employers may purchase one for $200.

Advertisements for employers who registered with the Placement Service at the 1998 ASCB Annual Meeting are on the website; candidates may contact employers directly.

Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus Announces 10th Season

March 3
Designer Tissues
Robert Langer
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

March 24
Hearing & Deafness
A. James Hudspeth
The Rockefeller University

April 21
Learning Disorders
Paula Tallal
Rutgers University

May 19
The Sequence of the Worm Genome: What it Means for Human Biology
Martin Chalfie
Columbia University

June 16
Nitric Oxide: The Serious Side of Laughing Gas
Solomon Snyder
The Johns Hopkins University

September 15
The Potential of Stem Cell Research
John Gearhart
The Johns Hopkins University

October 6
New Approaches to the Study of Heart Failure
Eric Olson
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

October 20
Biological Warfare
Joshua Lederberg
The Rockefeller University

DeHann Encouages Scientists to Take Initiative Locally
At the ASCB Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Robert DeHaan received the first Bruce Alberts Award for Distinguished Contributions to Science Education. His acceptance speech follows:

Thank you, Bruce. I am pleased and honored to receive this award. In that it acknowledges and lauds what I have done and what ESEP has done to assist the Atlanta Public Schools in improving science education, I am grateful. But I am also gratified because of what the award says about Bruce Alberts and about the ASCB. The award makes explicit that one of the most prestigious and influential scientists in the world, and one of the most influential and highest quality scientific societies in the world place great value on encouraging scientists to play an important role in transforming science education at every level, from graduate students and post-doctoral trainees to kindergarten children. That is a most important public statement for a group of scientists to make. It says that we cell biologists really want our scientist members to express their concerns about issues such as who are going to be the scientists twenty years from now, and how can we help bring about science education reform. And it also makes explicit that this Society wants its members to take the time to get out into their communities, to prepare themselves to work productively with teachers and with children, and to participate in that reform.

There are a lot of people to thank on an occasion like this. First of all, it has to be clear that most of the success of the ESEP program should be credited not to me but to my colleagues in Atlanta. These include the two consecutive superintendents of the Atlanta Public Schools, Dr. Ben Canada and Dr. Betty Strickland, my co-PI's on the NSF grant, Dr. Molly Weinburgh of Georgia State University and Dr. L. Vernon Allwood of Morehouse School of Medicine, and the incredibly talented ESEP staff that has joined us in this effort. Second, I certainly want to acknowledge the support and guidance that we have received from the Local Systemic Change branch of the National Science Foundation.

And finally, many in the audience here may not be aware, Bruce, that the entire ESEP effort in Atlanta was inspired by a presentation that I heard you give at the ASCB meeting in New Orleans in 1993, at a session the Education Committee had organized on "The Role of Scientists in the Classroom". It was after that session, on the plane flying home, that I said to myself, "What the hell, if Bruce can do it in San Francisco, why can't I do it in Atlanta?" That's how it all began.

So let me thank you personally, Bruce, for the wonderful example you have set, and the ASCB for being so forward looking and socially responsible. And let me encourage every ASCB member, on the plane home from this meeting, to say to yourselves, "What the hell, if Bob can do it in Atlanta, why can't I...?"

The ASCB is grateful to those below who have recently given gifts to support Society activities:

Robert Adelstein
Milton Adesnik
Allison Berrier
Mina Bissell
Graciela Candelas
Laura Cisar
Caroline Damsky
Elliot Elson
Dan Felsenfeld
William Fletcher
Devin Gary
Bijan Ghosh
Toshikazu Hamasaki
Meenhard Herlyn
Ira Herskowitz
Benjamin Kaminer
Gordon Laurie
Ulrike Lichti
Molly Mastrangelo
Narla Mohandas
Minoru Morikawa
Vivianne Nachmias
D.L. Odor
Shoshana Paglin
Lenore Pereira
James Sabry
Hitoshi Sakakibara
Mikhail Semenov
Carolyn Silflow
Susan Suarez
Joel Swanson
Holly Thompson

The Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award is for an individual or organization in the U.S. that encourages girls and women to pursue studies or careers in science and technology. This $5,000 award is presented annually by the Maria Mitchell Association, an educational organization named to commemorate America's first professional woman astronomer. Application deadline is March 30, 1999. The Award presentation will be on October 2, 1999 on Nantucket Island, MA. Nomination applications are available online or from the Maria Mitchell Association, 2 Vestal Street, Nantucket, MA 02554; (508) 228-9198.

Bruce Alberts, ASCB member since 1981, has been re-elected to a second six-year term as President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Alberts' final term runs from July 1999 through June 2005.

Mary Hendrix of the University of Iowa, an ASCB member since 1978, has been elected President-elect of FASEB. She will serve as President from July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001.

Linda Hicke of Northwestern University, an ASCB member since 1989, was presented with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, in recognition of her research on new therapies for the treatment of cancer and diabetes.

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz of the NIH and Mark McNiven of the Mayo Clinic have been appointed the first fellows of the Keith R. Porter Endowment for Cell Biology. The fellowships recognize outstanding achievement by emerging leaders in cell biology.

Ira Mellman of Yale University School of Medicine, an ASCB member since 1981, has been named Interim Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Cell Biology.

The WICB Committee recognizes outstanding achievements in cell biology by presenting two Career Recognition Awards at the ASCB Annual Meeting. The Junior Award is given to a woman in an early stage of her career (assistant professor or equivalent) who has made exceptional scientific contributions to cell biology and exhibits the potential for continuing a high level of scientific endeavor while fostering the career development of young scientists. The Senior Award is given to a woman or man in a later career stage (full professor or equivalent) whose outstanding scientific achievements are coupled with a long-standing record of support for women in science and by mentorship of both men and women in scientific careers.

To submit a nomination for a 1999 Career Recognition Award, please provide: for the Senior Award, a letter of nomination, curriculum vitae of the candidate and a maximum of 5 letters of support; for the Junior Award, a letter of nomination, curriculum vitae of the candidate, and a maxiumum of 3 letters of support. Materials should be sent to Trina Armstrong at the ASCB National Office: 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Nominations must be received by August 2.