Dear members,

Happy New Year! An exciting year ahead for the Society as we move towards the final preparation for the joint SDB/ISDB Congress of Developmental Biology in Snowbird, Utah, 5-10th July, 1997. The registration packages will be on their way to you shortly and I urge all of you to register and submit an abstract. Please also encourage members of your lab and colleagues who are not members of the Society to attend. It will be a great meeting. Extra registration packages can be obtained from Ida Chow ([email protected]).

We have scheduled time for special interest workshops at the meeting. Some are already planned, but we do have time and space for a few more. If you are particularly interested in organizing such a workshop, please send me an outline for consideration. Please note that no more funds are available from the general meeting budget to support the attendance of speakers at such workshops. You are of course at liberty to raise your own funds for a workshop, but any such plans should be included in your proposal to ensure that they do not conflict with the general fundraising for the meeting. Please contact me by email ([email protected]).

The Board of Trustees of the Society met in December and, among other issues, decided to simplify the process for nomination of eminent developmental biologists for the annual Conklin award of the Society. If you think someone is particularly deserving of this award, all you have to do is send Ida their name, mailing address and a brief nomination paragraph, outlining the impact of the work of the individual on the field of Developmental Biology. The nomination committee will consider all nominations and obtain any additional material required. Please think about this now and get your nominations in to Ida asap.

Janet Rossant
President, Society for Developmental Biology