Congratulations to Len Harrison, President-elect of the IDS!
Starting in 2001, Len Harrison will be the new President of the IDS. For the rest of this year, Hubert Kolb and Len will be working together to ensure a smooth transition and continuous growth of the society. All votes are in and the percentages are presented below. Special thanks to Terry Delovitch and Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen, this year's other two candidates.
Terry Delovitch - 26%
Leonard Harrison - 53%
Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen - 21% |
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In accepting nomination for the President of IDS, I considered what I could offer. First, I'd ensure that there was good, ongoing communication between the Executive and the Membership, with maintenance of the Webpage. Second, while the IDS is a Society for scientists and clinician-scientists primarily interested in type 1 diabetes, I would strongly encourage expansion of membership to be inclusive of all areas of immunology, genetics and epidemiology that impinge on diabetes. We must devise strategies to attract young researchers especially (to replace the old grey - haired guard). How many recipients of JDFI immunology grants are members of IDS? Our lives are busy; why add another Society? Therefore, the third and most important point is to say that the Society must have a unique role in order to attract new membership. What is it? I think it is to organise a state-of-the-art scientific-clinical meeting that covers the field as no other does* and to globally facilitate and coordinate studies relevant to pre-clinical diagnosis, risk assessment - prediction, prevention and cure of type 1 diabetes. The antibody and T-cell Workshops exemplify this role, which could be expanded, for example, to multi-centre prevention trials.
*The abstracts of the scientific meeting should be published and the meeting well-reviewed (eg in Immunology Today). However, I think that having "our own journal" is a form of exclusivity that may well be counterproductive, and that members of the IDS should publish in the best possible journals. |
