President’s Welcome to SRBR 2020
Welcome to the 17th SRBR meeting, our first to be held entirely online, and our first to be conducted during a global pandemic. As I write this, over 700 scientists, physicians, industry representatives and patient advocates have registered in solidarity. At this meeting, you will have the opportunity to hear live (synchronous) and recorded (asynchronous) presentations. Dr. Katja Lamia, Program Chair, has moved what was to be an onsite meeting in Florida to an online meeting on Zoom. All of it. She moved the entire 5-day meeting into 21 hours of live streaming and recorded content.
So, this is a meeting of firsts. Please enjoy the symposia, slide sessions, and posters. Come ready for the debate on “what can a single sample tell us about body time?” Listen to the lessons learned from the Presidential Symposium speakers, Ying-hui Fu and Julie Flygare, and the Pittendrigh-Aschoff lecturer, Amita Sehgal. Meet the professors. Visit the exhibitors. Some of us may suffer from the intense schedule and the presentations in the middle of our subjective night, but all of us will be contributing to the first SRBR meeting when our colleagues from Asia will not have travelled across 13 time zones and our trainees will not be condemned to sitting in a dark conference hall on a beautiful day.
To make this work, you can plan ahead. From June 1-3, you will receive daily emails with a Zoom link to each presentation or session. Most sessions will be recorded so that, for the first time, you don’t have to miss any of the concurrent presentations. All of us who have registered will have online access to the recordings through July 3, 2020. You can ask questions through multiple, multimedia modes.
Some things remain the same. To encourage speakers to present their latest, do not take images of the presentations. To encourage positive interactions, respect the perspectives of all attendees. Remember, even the chat windows will be saved. It is up to all of us to make it work.
We considered canceling this meeting. We realized in March that travel to Florida was becoming exponentially riskier and many meetings were being cancelled. We opted to not give up. We could not wait until our next meeting (i.e. “see you in Amelia Island, 2022!”) and were compelled by these objectives: 1) to serve our need to share the best research in biological rhythms NOW, 2) to gain insight from our colleagues who come with diverse perspectives and backgrounds NOW, 3) to establish connections and promote our trainees NOW and 3) to not spread SARS-Cov2.
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
–Maya Angelou, poet, activist, and St. Louis native
My thanks go out to all our sponsors who continued to support us moving from a physical conference to a virtual platform.
This meeting would not have been possible without the exceptional service of several SRBR members. Katja Lamia and her Program Committee selected 99 speakers and 461 poster presenters from over 40 countries. Joanna Chiu and her Awards Committee reviewed over 240 abstract submissions from trainees. Horacio de la Iglesia raised over $60,000 from government grants and corporate sponsors to support trainees’ registration for the meeting. Ilia Karatsoreos and Jenn Evans worked expertly to move Professional Development, Trainee Day and Junior Faculty Day into an online, year-long, format. Sheena de Giorgio, Dawn Keglor, Julie Cauthen, and Catherine West at Parthenon Management Group rose to the challenge and created the infrastructure for this online meeting. The SRBR Board of Directors who served with me for the past two years has been amazing through all of this. I thank all of them for their dedication to see this meeting happen and I thank all of you for attending and sharing your insights to make this meeting succeed.
Best wishes for a great meeting and be well,
Erik Herzog
SRBR President, 2018-2020
SRBR Virtual Conference Registration still Open!!
