Dear Member of the Southern California Society for Microscopy and Microanalysis,
We invite you all to Caltech on March 11 for the Annual All-day Symposium of SCSMM. We have assembled an excellent program that hopefully has something for everyone. The first talk will be presented by our incoming President, Krassimir Bozhilov of UCR. You will also hear Brendan Foran, MAS Co-Chair for this year's Microscopy and Microanalysis meeting in Portland and our national MAS tour speaker, Nicholas Ritchie, from NIST. Other speakers are from both industry, Gianni Torraca from Amgen, and academia, Chia Ma from Caltech and Noah Malmstadt from USC. We will have graduate student speakers as well as presentations from our vendors describing those new capabilities that we would probably all like to have in our labs. We hope you enjoy the meeting.
There will be a poster session and our invitation for graduate students to present posters will remain open until Monday, March 8 (so we can order easels). A $300 scholarship towards attending M&M will be awarded for the best student poster.
There will be a brief business meeting after lunch. Remember that this is your chance to provide input on how the Society is run. We have Board with members who have served our society for many years. Carol Garland (Caltech) has been our local arrangements chair for this meeting and we are inviting Carol to rejoin the board once again. Carol was Secretary when I was last President almost 20 years ago. With Carol on the Board, we will have representation from most of the local universities with electron microscopy capabilities. However, with the transition of Krassimir from VP Physical Sciences to President, we will now have open positions for VP Physical Sciences and VP Biological Sciences.
Being President of SCSMM for the last year has been rewarding and somewhat challenging. But today my thoughts are with another President, my former mentor, past President of the Microbeam Analysis Society, and the co-author of the definitive text on TEM for materials scientists, David Williams, now President of University of Alabama in Huntsville. I know Dave well and I know his commitment to leading UAH as best he can. Clearly the tragedy for the University, the Department of Biological Sciences and the families of the three who lost their lives is devastating. But we, as a community largely of physical and biological scientists, must all be in shock that such things can happen.
John
Porter
President, SCSMM
Last Modified 02/22/10