Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) Council and Business Meetings, 2009, Iowa City, IA

Liz Raffaele attended part of the meeting. The meeting began with Introductions. 2. Approval of minutes.—The Council unanimously approved the minutes of the 2008 Council and Business meetings, published in the February 2009 issue of MBE and also available at http://www.smbe.org/archive.htm online. 3. MBE Editor's report.—The MBE Editor gave a report on the health of the journal (see detailed MBE Editor's report). 4. GBE Editor's report.—The GBE Editor gave a brief report on the successful launch of the journal. 5. Treasurer's report.—Treasurer John Archibald summarized the financial state of the Society. Records indicate that the Society is in excellent financial health. (See detailed Treasurer's report.) 6. Secretary's report.—Secretary Jianzhi Zhang reviewed the Council actions over the preceding year. These notes, along with the meeting minutes, are summarized here: Bylaws amendment: In September 2009, SMBE Council proposed to the membership a series of bylaw changes made necessary in part by the launching of a second SMBE journal, Genome Biology and Evolution. In November 2009, the amendments proposed by the Council were approved by the membership by a vast majority (252) of those voted (262). The new Bylaws are posted on the SMBE Web site. Zhang informed society members of the composition of the committee and invited suggestions for nominees. The candidates are Ken Wolfe The elections were conducted online from May 11 to May 29, at the OUP member-subscription site, where short biographies of each candidate were made available. In the final tally, Drs Wolfe, Bush, and Long were elected to hold the offices of President-, with the theme of ''Darwin to the Next Generation.'' The meeting attracted around 600 delegates. The scientific program included 4 plenary lectures, 30 symposia, and more than 300 posters. Eight contestants were selected to compete for the Walter Fitch Student Prize, and the final winner was Joshua Bayes from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In addition to supporting eight Fitch-Prize contestants for traveling to Iowa City, SMBE awarded a total of 11 Postdoctoral Researcher Travel Awards and 20 Graduate Student Travel Awards. SMBE also gave several poster prizes and sponsored the Undergraduate Diversity Mentoring Program Awards. Future Annual Meetings: The presentation of the proposal for SMBE2010 (4–8 July 2010) in Lyon, France, was given by Manolo Gouy of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Facilities as well as organizational plans were presented, along with maps of the site, general information about the locale, and the …