Council Meetings
I. Call to Order
President James McInerney called the council meeting to order at 8:05 AM Pacific time on July 6, 2022. He asked for conflicts of interest, and none were identified. In electronic attendance were President James McInerney, Past President Harmit Malik, President-Elect Kateryna Makova, Councilors Stephen Wright, Sarah Schaack, Josefa Gonzalez, Katerina Gushanski, Maria Avila Arcos, and Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, Secretary Nadia D. Singh, Treasurer John McCutcheon, MBE Editors-in-Chief Brandon Gaut (ex officio) and Claudia Russo (ex officio), and GBE Editor-in-Chief Laura A. Katz (ex officio).
Non-council Members in Attendance
Lulu Stader (Executive Administrator) and Sudhir Kumar (outgoing ex officio as MBE EiC) also attended.
II. Treasurer’s Report
Treasurer John McCutcheon presented the annual Treasurer’s report, with details on journal and meeting revenue and expenses. It was noted that the report was not fully up to date because we did not as yet have the 2020–2021 numbers. However, the society continues to be financially healthy. Council discussed several priorities moving forward to reduce our net assets and best serve our membership. Council decided that James will form a committee by the end of the calendar year to determine a 5-year plan to invest our assets and invest in our society to reduce our net assets. Full details can be found in the Treasurer’s report.
III. Secretary’s Report
Secretary Nadia D. Singh briefly reviewed the Council’s actions over the preceding year. Council voted on two motions between January 1 and July 6, 2022. Council approved: 1) funding three regional/interdisciplinary meetings and three satellite meetings and 2) reappointing Adam Eyre-Walker and Laura Katz for a second term of 5 years each. Council also discussed the low numbers of free memberships this year and the low number of submissions for best paper to GBE. Full details can be found in the Secretary report.
IV. Election of SMBE Officers
A nominations committee to nominate candidates for the position of President-elect, Secretary, and two councilor positions was chaired by Justin Blumenstiel. Yonas Tekle, Jun-Yi Leu, Andrea Betancourt, Tal Dagan, David Enard, Aurora Ruiz-Herrera Moreno, and Nadia D. Singh (ex officio, SMBE Secretary, as per by-laws.) The membership of the society was informed by email of the committee composition in early 2022 and asked to nominate candidates for the positions. Council does and will continue to remind the nominating committee every year to prioritize gender and geographic representation among the candidates, but it maintains flexibility in how this is achieved by the committee.
The final selected nominees were Stephen Wright and Yoko Satta and for President-elect, Emmanuelle Lerat and J. J. Emerson for Secretary, and Christian Landry, Rebecca Zufall, Davide Pisani, and Qiaomei Fu for Councilor. The membership of the society was issued online ballot details through Allen Press. In total, 378 members voted in this election out of the 2,587 members invited. This corresponds to a 14.9% participation rate, which is lower than historic participation rates. The results of the election are that President-elect is Stephen Wright, Secretary is Emmanuelle Lerat, and Councilors are Christian Landry and Rebecca Zufall. The full nominations report is available as a separate document.
V. Editors’/OUP/AP Reports
The Editors-in-Chief of MBE and GBE gave reports on the current states of their journals (see separate editors’ reports for full details). For GBE, the impact factor went up considerably this year. GBE continues explore bias in publication. The infrastructure to support the MBE–GBE transfer process is efficient and operating smoothly. During our conversations, Council approved two proposals from GBE. One proposal is a renewal of the genome reports assistant editor position and the second proposal was for each EIC to hire a student to serve as a data availability editorial assistant. Both of these items will become recurring budget items moving forward.
MBE continues to be in a very strong position. We had a record number of submissions last year. MBE continues to have an excellent editorial staff and the transition to the new EICs is going smoothly.
The OUP and AP reports were not formally presented.
VI. Other Activities
Future Annual Meetings
SMBE 2023 will be in Ferrara, Italy. SMBE 2024 will be Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Council agreed to prioritize making this meeting financially accessible to Mexican attendees. Council discussed a number of issues around SMBE 2025. We discussed whether it should be fully online, hybrid, or a hub and spoke model. Council agreed that moving forward, every in-person meeting needs to have some online component for accessibility. Council agreed that in 2025, we will meet in person. We are currently soliciting proposals for SMBE 2025 from outside North America and Europe.
IDEA Task Force, Proposals
The IDEA task force has been convened and two co-chairs were elected. The call for IDEA proposals was launched in April and 19 proposals were received.
Governance
James presented on governance. This included a white paper, an action and decision log, and the possibility of a constitution.
Solidarity Fund
Josefa presented a proposal for a solidarity fund. Council discussed this proposal extensively. Council also discussed creating a 2-year pilot for this fun that includes efficacy assessment.
New Awards
Jeff presented a proposal for a mentoring award. Council discussed creating new awards more broadly, particularly ones that recognize our colleagues who are in under-resourced environments.
Early Career Award
This award is given to outstanding members of the SMBE community who are in the early stages of an independent research career. The 2022 recipient was Molly Schumer at Stanford University.
Mid-Career Award
This award is intended for outstanding members of the SMBE community who are in the midst of their research careers. The 2022 recipient was Phillip Messer at Cornell University.
Lifetime Achievement Award
This award is intended for outstanding senior members of the SMBE community. The 2022 recipient was Charles Aquadro from Cornell University.
Service Award
This award is intended for individuals who have provided extraordinary service to SMBE community. The 2022 recipient was Chris Lapine.
Graduate Student Excellence Awards
This Symposium provides a forum for young investigators to showcase their exemplary research and continues to be a highlight of the SMBE annual meeting. We celebrate all of the candidates in this symposium. The awardees were:
Agneesh Barua, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST)
Robert Driver, East Carolina University
Diana Cruz Dávalos, University of Lausanne
Steven Fiddaman, University of Oxford
Chris Kyriazis, UCLA
Jacob Steenwyk, University of California, Berkeley
Wendy Valencia-Montoya, Harvard University
Jessica Warren, Arizona State University
Caroline Weisman, Princeton University
Best Graduate Student Paper Award
These awards provide recognition for outstanding student papers in both SMBE journals. For MBE, the committee selected one winner and two honorable mentions.
Winner
Margarita Takou: “Maintenance of Adaptive Dynamics and No Detectable Load in a Range-Edge Outcrossing Plant Population”
Honorable Mention
Julia Kloos: “Piggybacking on Niche Adaptation Improves the Maintenance of Multidrug-resistance Plasmids”
Maddie James: “Highly Replicated Evolution of Parapatric Ecotypes”
For GBE, the committee selected one winner and two honorable mentions.
Winner: Michael Goldberg “Mutational Signatures of Replication Timing and Epigenetic Modification Persist through the Global Divergence of Mutation Spectra across the Great Ape Phylogeny”
Honorable Mentions
Arkadiy Garber: “The Evolution of Interdependence in a Four-Way Mealybug Symbiosis”
Galen Martin: “CHH Methylation Islands: A Nonconserved Feature of Grass Genomes That is Positively Associated with Transposable Elements but Negatively Associated with Gene-Body Methylation”.
VII. Additional Business
Council discussed revisiting the current and proposed future OUP contract.
Business Meeting
This year’s business meeting was pre-recorded on October 19 and disseminated via social media on October 25. The President presented a financial overview of the society. All of the awards were highlighted. The President presented an overview of the membership categories, a membership update, and also reviewed the benefits of membership. The President introduced the new Editors-in-Chief of MBE and thanked outgoing EIC Sudhir Kumar for his incredible service over the past 10 years. He provided some statistics about our journals, including impact factors and submission rates. The President reported the election results and the locations of SMBE 2023 and 2024. Details regarding all of the global symposia associated with SMBE Everywhere (2022) were presented. The work of the IDEA taskforce was highlighted.