—Recognizing our junior members: Future of our society

Dear members,

I hope you are all doing well. I am writing this letter to highlight a couple of things. As you all know, our society is relatively young (inaugurated on September 7, 1990). The current society membership includes 44% student/postdoc members. Of the remaining 56% regular members, 28% are under the age of 45. If you attend an IS-MPMI Congress, you will be impressed by the youthfulness and the vibrant look of our society. Why am I reminding you of these stats? You may have noticed two society efforts in the past few weeks that are aimed at supporting and recognizing the junior members of our society. My letter is intended to provide some more details about these efforts.

First, the Local Scientific Committee (LSC) of the XVII IS-MPMI Congress (Portland, Oregon, USA) and the IS-MPMI Board are working together to secure funds to support the travel of potentially 70 students/postdocs/early career professionals to attend the upcoming congress. We anticipate that these travel awards (named after the late distinguished member Ko Shimamoto) and associated activities will enrich the scientific and networking experiences for both the awardees and other congress attendees. The LSC and IS-MPMI Board realize that the limited travel funds do not allow us to support all student and postdoc attendees (we wish we could!). Nevertheless, we would strongly encourage you to come to the congress in Portland regardless of the ultimate sources of funding that support your travel. Personally, I cannot overemphasize the positive impact that attending an IS-MPMI congress could have on the career of a student/postdoc/early career professional, especially if they are a first-time IS-MPMI Congress attendee. I remember my first time attending an IS-MPMI Congress (Interlaken, Switzerland, 1990). That congress was such an eye-opening experience for me, listening to one amazing talk after another describing major advances in the study of rhizobia, agrobacteria and various pathogens. It was in that congress, after listening to the inspiring talks by Fred Ausubel, Brian Staskawicz, and Jeff Dangl on the development of the Arabidopsis-Pseudomonas syringae pathosystem for cloning avirulence genes and studying plant defense responses, when I began to think about possibly using this system for my future study of bacterial pathogenesis and disease susceptibility. This type of IS-MPMI Congress experience is not unique to me as students in my own lab have come back from these meetings with a renewed enthusiasm and better perspective as well. I can easily imagine students/postdocs who attend the congress in Portland will be similarly inspired to nurture some creative ideas that will eventually help to launch their scientific careers. Plus, how often do you get a chance to talk to a large number of peers and friends whose scientific interests are so closely aligned with your own? My bottom line: please take advantage of the IS-MPMI congress venue to communicate your exciting findings and to network with colleagues who could one day help your career, either directly or indirectly.

The second effort I want to mention is the recent creation of the IS-MPMI Young Investigator Award, which was recently approved by the IS-MPMI Board as a means to recognize outstanding junior members of our society. This is very exciting and long overdue! This new award builds on the tradition of the IS-MPMI Award, which was established a decade ago and has been presented each year to a member of the MPMI community who has performed outstanding innovative research. So far, the IS-MPMI Award has been given to some of the most accomplished pioneers of MPMI research –I think you would agree that many more pioneers of our society deserve this award. In any case, the Board recognizes a great need to also recognize innovative junior members of our society, thus the creation of the new award. A call for nomination (or self-nomination) has been made. The nomination deadline is March 9, 2016 and selection of the awardee will be completed in April, 2016. Similar to the IS-MPMI Awardee, the IS-MPMI Young Investigator Awardee will give a featured presentation at the IS-MPMI XVII Congress. There are many highly deserving junior members in our community who are eligible for the IS-MPMI Young Investigator Award. However, if they are not nominated, they will not be considered. Therefore, with this letter I am urging you to nominate your outstanding junior colleagues for this prestigious award, before March 9, 2016!

Awards are only one of several ways for recognizing members of our society. I can say on behalf of all senior members of our society that you, the junior members, are the gems of our community. With the looming passage of a generation of MPMI research pioneers, you hold the key to the future of our society. I wish you all the best in your current study and work, and very much look forward to welcoming you in Portland and celebrating your individual successes.

Best wishes,

Sheng Yang He

IS-MPMI President