Peter Jezzard, Ph.D.
2013-14 ISMRM President |
ISMRM and ESMRMB are looking
forward to inviting delegates to the meeting in Milan. We had a record
number of abstract submissions this year, totaling 6480, which augurs well
for a successful ISMRM Annual Meeting. Annual Meeting Program Chair, Derek
Jones, has worked tirelessly over the past year to ensure that the best
possible scientific interactions can occur during the meeting. A
particularly noteworthy new initiative is the “Newbies Reception”, to which
all first time attendees will be invited, and will be able to network with
more established members of the Society. This initiative has resulted from a
“Trainee Working Advisory Group” that Derek set up at the Salt Lake City
meeting
and that enabled the ISMRM leadership to gain
valuable face-to-face feedback from a spectrum of trainee
members (including several who had never attended an ISMRM
Annual Meeting before). The feedback that we got was that
the Annual Meeting can be quite bewildering to those new to the
Society (and sometimes to those not so new!). Hopefully the opportunity to have an
“orientation” and networking opportunity right at the start
of the Annual Meeting will help these people feel better
welcomed to the meeting, and will also help them get the
most out of the many valuable scientific and educational
activities that the Society offers. Senior members: please
encourage your trainees to attend this reception, and please
support this event if asked to be a mentor. |
There are also two ticketed events
that I would like to draw your attention to. Both are free
to attend, but both have limited space and so tickets will
be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. The first
reception is a Women in MR Forum Evening Event, supported by
Bruker, that will take place on the Tuesday evening at the
15th Century Castello Sforzesco in central Milan.
The Local Organizing Committee has secured this atmospheric
venue to allow female clinical and basic science members to
network and discuss key issues in MR. The second, occurring
on the Wednesday evening, is a Wiley-sponsored event to
celebrate 30 years of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine,
one of our two Society journals. A team of experts has
identified from the MRM archives 30 seminar papers
that have helped shape our field, and a celebration edition
of MRM that combines these papers is being produced
for the occasion. Authors of those papers will discuss the
inspiration behind their work and will be available to meet
attendees.
Another new initiative that is proving quite popular is the
“Room Sharing” service (see
http://www.ismrm.org/14/room_share.htm).
This facility enables ISMRM members to identify others who
might be seeking to share hotel rooms and thereby minimize
the costs of attending the Annual Meeting. Thanks to our
ISMRM Secretary, Margaret Hall-Craggs, for suggesting this
already popular initiative!
Of course, ISMRM is not just about the Annual Meeting, and
contained in this issue of MR Pulse you will also find
information on two of our up-coming workshops. ISMRM is
averaging at least 6 sponsored workshops per year, mostly on
topics that are proposed by our Study Groups. This helps
ensure that ISMRM maintains a year-round relevance to our
members. An excellent Board of Trustees initiative to
support our workshops is an allocation of money from the
ISMRM Research and Education Fund that provides support for
Trainee members and Associate members (who live in
economically challenged areas of the world) to attend our
workshops. Please also participate in the increasing number
of Virtual Study Group Meetings that are occurring
throughout the year, allowing Study Groups to “meet” in a
convenient online setting to address issues of scientific
interest to their Study Group members. For an archive of
recent Virtual Study Group meetings please see:
http://www.ismrm.org/members-only/virtual-study-group-meeting-archive/
In closing, I want to thank all the many people who have
committed time and energy to ISMRM. We have an army of
volunteer members who give time to help ISMRM achieve its
mission of remaining the foremost international and
interdisciplinary community of scientists in our field. It
has been a pleasure and an honour (note British spelling!)
to serve as President for 2013-14, and I can only encourage
you to become involve in our committees, study groups,
and regional chapters. See you in Milan!
Peter Jezzard, PhD
President, 2013-2014
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