On December 5, 2016, dignitaries from the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attended an SOT-FDA Memorandum Signing Ceremony to extend the Colloquium series developed by these organizations. Below are excerpts from the remarks I delivered to express our gratitude for this partnership.
Top row from left to right: Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Allen Rudman, Raymond (Phil) Yeager, SOT Past President Peter Goering, Tracy Chen, John Leighton, and SOT Executive Director Clarissa Russell. Bottom row from left to right: Dennis Keefe, Luciana Borio, and SOT President John Morris.
I am delighted to sign, on behalf of SOT, this MOU extending the SOT-FDA Colloquium series. The goal of the series is to provide cutting-edge toxicological science to FDA risk assessors and to all attendees who participate either in person or on-line….Through our efforts as a Society to foster the integration of other scientific disciplines with toxicology, and promote transformative and emerging science within the field, we are able to identify within our membership outstanding scientists who are truly the global experts in their field to provide the content within the Colloquium series.
I would be remiss if it did not personally thank Ivan Rusyn, the chair of the program committee, as well as Allen Rudman, Suzanne Fitzpatrick, and Peter Goering at FDA, who have been responsible for the success of the series. Perhaps there is no better indication of the quality of the series than its ever-growing participation. Either via live webcasts or accessing on-line recordings, over 2,500 participants from over 20 countries around the world have benefited from this series. Webcasts have been made to such diverse universities as Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania, Wenzhou Medical University, and the University of Valencia. Thus, the reach of this program has been truly global.
This program is a stellar example of how the Society can communicate to key audiences the advances in our field. We are delighted to sign this MOU to continue this outstanding series. It is a clear example of the synergistic activities of two organizations that will, in the long term, serve to create a safer and healthier world.
Recordings and materials are available after the events and can be found on the SOT website.