Minutes of the International Society for Plasmid Biology
General Meeting, Cambridge, UK.
Wednesday, September 21st 2016, 6.15 pm
Officers presiding:
President Dhruba Chattoraj
Current Secretary Eva Top
Current Treasurer Christopher M. Thomas
- Welcome
The ISPB President Dhruba Chattoraj opened the meeting and welcomed the participants.
- Attendance
The Conference was attended by 163 delegates, the majority of whom were present for the ISPB General Meeting.
- Adoption of the agenda
The agenda was approved.
- Approval of the minutes from the previous General Meeting, Palm Cove, Australia, 2014
The minutes were approved.
- Approval of the constitution (Appendix 1)
The president asked if anyone felt that further changes to the constitution were needed. In the absence of any suggested changes the current constitution was approved.
- Nominations for President, Secretary and Treasurer followed by election
Nominations were as follows: for President: Fernando de la Cruz; Secretary: Eva Top, and Treasurer: Christopher M. Thomas. All were approved unanimously. [Note that Eva Top and Chris Thomas left the room to allow discussion about whether either should be replaced. This was deemed unnecessary with Fernando de la Cruz because he was not standing for re-election and in the absence of a second nomination it was clear that the suggestion that had been circulated to delegates before the meeting met with general approval].
- Association with SGM and new ISPB website
See notes from Chris Thomas in Appendix 2. Chris explained the situation, and recommended that we (ISPB) remain independent and put any discussion with the Microbiology Society on hold. ISPB will have its own web site that is hosted by an independent server provider with a small annual fee.
Chris D. Thomas, who used to maintain the IPSB website, fully endorsed the proposal since he no longer has the resources to do this.
- Financial Report:
See Appendix 3. Because of the increasing need to provide a deposit for booking future conference venues it was decided not to not disburse any travel bursaries to young scientists. The current balance is therefore £6,248.38.
A motion to accept the financial report was made by Konny Smalla; seconded by Chris D Thomas. All were in favour of accepting the report.
- Journal Plasmid: update by Editor-in-Chief Julian Rood.
Julian emphasized that Plasmid is the society’s journal, thus it is our journal. Therefore it needs our support through submitting papers and reviews of high quality. There will be a special issue again as a result of this conference. However, the topics of submitted manuscript do not need to be the same as what delegates presented at the meeting.
People should send suggestions by October 31, and the deadline will be December 5.
- Venue and organizers of future meetings
– The next meeting will be held August 12-17, 2018, at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Organisers will be Eva Top and Beth Traxler. There are a lot of direct flights from Europe and Asia to Seattle, and the campus can be reached form the airport by Link light rail.
– 2020: The meeting will be in or close to Toulouse, France and organised by Jean-Yves Bouet and colleagues; dates to be determined.
Dhruba Chattoraj closed the meeting at 6:45 pm.