SMBE, through the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) Task Force, aims to address systemic racism, sexism, colonialism, and other exclusion in our society.
SMBE DIVERSITY STATEMENT
Our goal as a society is to foster a rich, interactive climate for sharing, discussing, and furthering scientific knowledge. In doing so, we welcome individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. We believe that, as a scientific society, we benefit from a strong commitment to community-building. Membership in a society inherently evokes the notion of belonging or inclusion, and we strive to make this society one where all members are encouraged and able to participate, regardless of career stage or background. Furthermore, these values are not limited to our membership but form the basis of our goals for outreach to members of the scientific community and society at large.
SMBE IDEA TASK FORCE
Mission
The SMBE IDEA Task Force aims to increase the participation of scientists from diverse backgrounds (gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, career stages, geographic location, ethnicity, etc.) in the fields of molecular biology and evolution. The goal of the task force is to broaden recruitment and retention across groups historically underrepresented or minoritised in these fields, removing barriers to participation in the society's activities, and fostering a diverse, respectful, and welcoming community that serves and benefits all of its members.
The task force will annually invite members of SMBE to propose initiatives to actively promote inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. SMBE will support selected initiatives with up to $25,000. Examples of initiatives could include but are not limited to workshops, symposia, training opportunities, stand-alone featured talks, or inequity data collection in particular groups, countries, or regions (to name a few). If you wish to know more about the initiatives that the task force has selected for funding in previous years, see below. The 2024 call for proposals is now open, please see HERE for more information.
Do you have a suggestion for how SMBE can be more inclusive? Let us know anonymously by completing this form.
Contact the SMBE IDEA Task Force by email or Twitter.
We are recruiting for new task force members! Check out the call HERE!
Task Force Members
Co-chair: Ravinder K Kanda (she/her), Oxford Brookes University, UK
Co-chair: Samantha López Clinton (she/her), Swedish Museum of Natural History, Sweden
SMBE council Liaison Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra (he/him), University of California Davis, U.S.A.
C. Eduardo Guerra Amorim (he/him), California State University Northridge, U.S.A.
Grace Yuh Chwen Lee (she/her), University of California, Irvine, U.S.A.
Miriam Miyagi (they/she), Harvard University, U.S.A.
Sishuo Wang (he/him), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Tugce Bilgin Sonay (she/her), Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland
Epifanía Arango Isaza (she/her), University of Zurich, Switzerland
Federico Hoffman, Mississippi State University, U.S.A.
Previously funded projects
Title: Evolutionary Biology Crash Course
Amount awarded: 25,000 USD
Year awarded: 2022
Links for more information: Evolutionary Biology Crash Course
See below for an excerpt from their website:
Introduction
Representation matters. For young students from the Global South who want to start a career in science, systemic knowledge gaps and other barriers persist, making access to higher education in North America and Europe more difficult. Evolutionary Biology is not an exception, despite ongoing efforts to increase inclusion. To help address this, we created an online, free, and inclusive Evolutionary Biology Crash Course and other affiliated services and opportunities to help prospective students achieve a better understanding of and access to the field.
Our Mission
We seek to increase our participant’s chances of obtaining access to high level master's programmes, and an opportunity at a career as future evolutionary biologists. We envision a future where evolutionary biology as a field is more inclusive, representative, and accessible to all those who want to make their mark and better the world.
The past and the future!
We already held two editions of the crash course, in 2022 and 2023. We considered them a huge success, with over 300 students successfully completing the program. (Around 500 students are taking part in the 2024 edition of the course - which is when this tab was last updated). In addition to a crash course, we also have an active mentorship program, a mini grant program, outreach through social media, and a translation initiative to make our content even more accessible. Please check out the pages on our website for more details!
Title: Virtual Lab Meeting Training Program
Amount awarded: 16,900 USD
Year awarded: 2022
Links for more information: SMBE Virtual Lab Meeting Training Program
See below for an excerpt from their website:
Science is an international endeavor! To promote equity and inclusion, we ran a Virtual Lab Meeting Training Program for 2022-2023 and 2023-2024! The goal of the program was to promote the exchange of ideas between labs with different academic cultures and make explicit efforts to connect faculty and students in the Molecular Biology and Evolution community across the globe. This program helped mentees develop an international supportive network, provided a pathway for future success, and broadened their knowledge in our field. Since many lab meetings have a virtual component, we thought this was an excellent time to take advantage of these unusual circumstances with a training program.
In this program, we provided training to students at the graduate or early postdoctoral level (“mentees”) by participating in lab meetings of a research group that shares their interests. The mentees participated by attending lab meetings during 2022-2023 or 2023-2024. Two lab meetings were dedicated to the mentee’s professional development. In 2022-2023, we connected 39 graduate students and early postdoctoral researchers (“mentees”) from 15 countries with 32 mentors from 11 countries.
Title: Resources for Inclusive Evolution Education (RIE2)
Amount awarded: 14,500 USD
Year awarded: 2023
Links for more information: Resources for Inclusive Evolution Education
See below for an excerpt from their application:
Project Details
We propose the development of Resources for Inclusive Evolution Education (RIE2). This project will create several teaching modules to educate scientists and improve undergraduate biology education by clarifying core concepts in evolutionary biology and providing relevant historical context. We will provide a central repository of science communication and educational tools that address white supremacist, settler-colonial, and capitalist underpinnings of the field and highlight diverse researchers who engage with these concepts as part of their research. By increasing the accessibility of teaching resources, we will facilitate their communication by researchers and instructors to ultimately improve understanding of these concepts among students and scientists.