SOT 52nd Annual Meeting Roving Reporter Tao Wang prepared the article below.
This year’s Carcinogenesis Specialty Section (CSS) meeting was filled with fun, excitement, and announcements as big as Texas. The membership turnout was excellent (~70), providing student and postdoc awardees with another opportunity to present their outstanding research. In addition to the usual food, libation, and camaraderie, members were treated to some unexpected fun. Helmut Zarbl, this year’s president, announced the creation of a new Endowment Fund in Environmental Cancer Research to support student research stipends and/or travel to the SOT Annual Meeting. To encourage everyone to contribute, Dr. Zarbl developed a new CSS logo, which he used to produce a distinctive lapel pin as his gift to the membership. He presented the pins to all attendees as a reminder to contribute. He personally pledged at least $500 per year and held a silent auction to support the new Endowment Fund. The auction winner received a ticket to accompany Dr. Zarbl to the SOT President’s reception later that evening. The highest bidder was Tulika Tyagi, graduate student from Texas Tech University, who won with an undisclosed bid. Rumor has it she had an exciting evening, meeting SOT 2012–2013 President Bill Slikker, incoming President Lois Lehman-McKeeman, as well as past presidents and SOT leaders. Hopefully she was inspired to get involved and become a future leader.
Yvonne Dragan, CSS Councilor, discussed the opportunities and rewards of developing Annual Meeting symposia, workshops, roundtables, Continuing Education courses, and Current Concepts in Toxicology meetings. She encouraged the membership, especially students and postdocs, to submit proposals for the 2014 Annual Meeting, and presented a list of possible topics.
Miriam Poirier, incoming CSS President, announced the winner of the Dharm Singh Student Research Award (Chad Walesky), as well as the first (Anand Ravindran), second (Philip Shelton), and third place Student Research Awards, which included a tie for the third place award (Sandra Wise and Xi Li). As luck would have it, there was also a tie for the Postdoctoral Research Award (Esra Mutlu and Michelle DeSimone) . As a result, CSS presented a total of six awards to future leaders of carcinogenesis research, CSS, and SOT.
Dr. Zarbl introduced the newly elected members of the leadership team, including Vice President–Elect James E. Klaunig and CSS Councilor Margaret Pratt. The winner of the Dharm Singh Award will serve as the Student Representative. The co-winners of the postdoc award will jointly serve as postdoc representatives. The evening ended with a call for all to get involved in CSS activities.