Each year, SMBE provides funds in aid for SMBE SATELLITE, INTERDISCIPLINARY AND REGIONAL MEETINGS. These meetings are organized and held independent of the SMBE annual meeting.

SMBE is now calling for proposals for meetings and actions to be held between Jan 2022 and Dec 31st 2022. Funds will be awarded on a competitive basis to members of the molecular evolution research community to run workshops/meetings on an important, focused, and timely topic of their choice. The number of awards will depend on the quality of proposals and total cost. However, given the paucity of meetings for some time, we may fund more proposals this year.

The EXTENDED deadline for submission of proposals is November 17th 2021.

SMBE SATELLITE MEETINGS

These are workshops or small, topically focused meetings with fewer than 100 participants that are organized and held independent of the SMBE annual meeting. In the past five years, SMBE has supported multiple satellite meetings on diverse topics, a sample of our most recent Satellite meetings include:

• “Mitochondrial Genomics and Evolution” 2017
• “Evolution of microbes in natural and experimental populations – synthesis and synergies” 2017
• “Molecular evolution and medicine” 2017
• “Evolution of genome architecture” 2017
• “Molecular evolution and the cell” 2018
• “Genome Evolution in Pathogen Transmission and Disease” 2018
• “Modern Methods for the study of ancient DNA” 2018
• “Molecular Biology and Evolution of Cancer” 2019
• “Towards an integrated concept of adaptation: uniting molecular population genetics and quantitative genetics” 2019

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We are delighted to announce this year’s Graduate Student Excellence Award winners and the winners of the Best Graduate Student Paper Awards!

Graduate Student Excellence Awards

The SMBE Graduate Student Excellence Award honors the best presentation at the Graduate Student Excellence symposium, which provides a forum for young investigators to showcase their exemplary research at the annual meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE).

Catarina Branco, Biomedical Research Center (CINBIO), University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain. Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Immunology, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain

Title: Influence of the Last Glacial Period on the genetic diversity of current Southeast Asians

Ian Vasconcellos Caldas, Department of Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Title: Inferring selective sweep parameters through supervised learning

Alida de Flamingh, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

Title: Sourcing Elephant Ivory from a Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Shipwreck

Michelle P Harwood, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Title: Recombination and population demographics impact allele-specific-expression of deleterious variants in human populations

Amanda Kowalczyk, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Title: Pan-mammalian analysis of molecular constraints underlying extended lifespan in mammals

Yeonwoo Park, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Title: Historical memory, epistasis, and contingency in long-term protein evolution

Thea F. Rogers, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Title: Sex-specific selection drives the evolution of alternative splicing in birds

Mengyi Sun, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Title: Preferred synonymous codons are more accurately translated: proteomic evidence, among-species variation, and mechanistic basis

Best Graduate Student Paper

These awards provide recognition for outstand

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We are delighted to announce our upcoming annual conferences.

• In 2022, we’ll go live again to Auckland, New Zealand. Please note that a decision will be made at the end of this year if this is possible or if we need to make this an online meeting again due to renewed lockdowns

• Our 2023 meeting will be in Ferrara, Italy, again likely with an online component.

• Our 2024 meeting will be in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (more information coming soon).

Exact dates to come, please expect all dates to be similar to the usual late June/ early July.

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SMBE is pleased to announce that videos from the 2021 Graduate Student Symposium, SMBE Presidential Addresses, SMBE Business Meeting and the 2021 SMBE Faculty Awards Symposium have been posted to the SMBE YouTube Channel. A “mini program” may be found HERE with links to view the presentations.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR NOMINATIONS:

Inclusion, Diversity Equity and Access (IDEA) Task Force

Charge: The IDEA Task Force was created to address the challenges faced by under-represented groups in SMBE, in particular, as well as science in general, including providing concrete recommendations for broadening representation and inclusion in all aspects of the society. This group will survey membership about priorities, solicit and be receptive to ideas and suggestions, investigate and discuss possibilities and logistics, and present recommendations to Council on a quarterly basis. Members of Council may also reach out to the IDEA Task Force with questions and suggestions for them to consider. By definition, then, the specific charges of this task force will evolve. Immediate tasks will be to identify priorities for initiatives and programming, recommend recipients of the IDEA awards (formerly Equal Opportunity Awards), and review the criteria and names of our existing awards to better reflect the values of our society.

Structure: The IDEA task force will be advisory to the SMBE Council, and will have 10 members. Two of these members shall be SMBE Councillors. The remaining 8 members-at-large will be selected from SMBE membership external to the Council. To encourage broad participation, former members of Council may not join the task force until a year has passed since their service on Council. There shall be two co-chairs, neither of whom may be Council members. We shall strive to maximize diversity on all axes among the membership.

Process: Members of the Task Force will be solicited from nominees (self-nominations are encouraged) from the SMBE membership. To be considered, nominees must submit a statement of interest that includes a brief description (no more than one page) of why that individual is interested in participating by email to secretary.smbe@gmail.com. Council will select the members of the task force from among the nominees, considering both their statements and representation. Membership will rotate, such that volunteers will serve for staggered terms of three years.

We call for nominations (including self-nominations) by 31 August 2021. Nominees will be contacted immediately thereafter and asked to provide statements by 15 September 2021. Initial appointment terms will include two 1-year positions, three 2-year positions, and three 3-year positions; if you have a preference for a shorter term, please indicate this when you submit your statement; otherwise terms will be decided arbitrarily by Council.

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Kelley Harris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, as well as an Affiliate Assistant Member of the Herbold Computational Biology Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her group is trying to understand how mutational processes are shaped by genetic drift and natural selection and how this evolutionary process in turn modulates the accumulation of genetic variation. After earning a B.A. in Mathematics from Harvard and an M.Phil. in Biological Sciences from Cambridge, advised by Richard Durbin, she completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley working with Rasmus Nielsen and Yun Song. Her postdoctoral work at Stanford in the lab of Jonathan Pritchard was supported by an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship. The Harris Lab is currently supported by an NIH NIGMS R35 grant as well as grants from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Sloan Foundation, the Kinship Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
 

2021 SMBE Mid-Career Excellence Award Winner: Tanja Stadler

Tanja Stadler is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in Basel. Further, Tanja is president of the Swiss National COVID-​19 Science Task Force. Tanja studied Applied Mathematics at the Technical University of Munich (Germany), the University of Cardiff (UK), and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). She obtained a Master degree in 2006 and a PhD in 2008 from the Technical University of Munich (with Prof. Anusch Taraz and Prof. Mike Steel). Tanja then joined ETH Zürich as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Sebastian Bonhoeffer in the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences, and was promoted to Group Leader in 2011. In 2014, she moved to the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering as an Assistant Professor where she obtained tenure in 2017. Her work is at the interface of mathematics, computer science, evolution, ecology and infectious diseases. In particular, she develops phylogenetic tools to address epidemiological and medical questions, as well as questions in the fields of ecology, species evolution, cell differentiation and language evolution. Her honors include the TUM PhD award 2008, the John Maynard Smith prize 2012, the ETH Latsis prize 2013, the Zonta prize 2013, and the ETH Golden Owl for teaching in 2016. In 2013, Tanja received an ERC starting grant. In 2020, Tanja received an ERC consolidator grant.

2021 SMBE Lifetime Research Achievements Award Winner: Michael Lynch

Michael Lynch is currently the Director of the Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution, Arizona State University, where he also heads an NSF-funded center grant focused on the cellular mechanisms of evolution. His research has long focused on the genetic mechanisms of evolution, particularly at the genomic and cellular levels, and on population-genomic analysis. His lab works with a number of model systems, most notably the microcrustacean Daphnia, the ciliate Paramecium, and numerous other unicellular prokaryotic and eukaryotic species. Current re

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