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President's Message: Exploring Toxicology Impacts, Expanding Outreach and Partnerships, and Preparing for the Annual Meeting

By John Morris posted 02-16-2017 15:10

  

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As I write this message, it is the typical cold and snowy in the Northeast. The winter weather, however, has not deterred the SOT Council from pursuing multiple efforts on the Society’s behalf. In particular, Council has continued to work towards two goals:

  1. Our mega focus goal of enhancing the stature and recognition of toxicology among other scientists.
  2. Our strategic plan goal of expanding our global outreach and impact by fostering international toxicology activities.

Stature Quote.pngKey to enhancing our stature and recognition is ensuring that other scientists understand the value of toxicology. This is encapsulated in our strategic objectives to increase mutual understanding among toxicologists and other disciplines and to increase partnerships/collaboration with scientific societies. Indeed, as stated in the SOT Constitution, the purpose of the society is to “facilitate the exchange of information among its members as well as among investigators of other scientific disciplines.” Towards these ends, we are in the process of a modification of our web page to provide information specifically tailored for other biomedical scientists. To be included as part of this page are a small number of case studies that document specific instances where toxicology (or toxicologists) had a key role in protecting the public health. We have formed a task force, the Toxicology Impact Task Force, to identify potential case studies. After the topics or instances of toxicology impact are identified, we will then write brief case studies for each. The goal is to demonstrate in a nutshell how important toxicology has been for protecting the public health.

The Society is a member society of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In Council discussions, it became clear that the Society was not fully participatory in AAAS. To explore this further, we have established another task force, the SOT-AAAS Task Force, to develop strategies that we might implement to become better able to leverage our membership in AAAS to enhance the stature and reputation of our science.

SOT-EUROTOX edit for web.pngToxicology knows no borders and our ever-increasing membership spans the entire globe. To enhance our global outreach and efforts, it is necessary that we engage in activities at a global level. To foster our cooperation with other toxicology societies, we recently had a joint meeting of the SOT Council with the leadership of EUROTOX. This was a very productive meeting in which we outlined mutual concerns about the training needs for toxicologists and about maintaining the training pipeline to develop the next generation of toxicologists. We also talked extensively about how we might better integrate our annual meetings. An expansion of the SOT/EUROTOX debate and additional opportunities for exchange of symposia and speakers were among the potential options we discussed. These changes would only serve to enhance the breadth and vitality of both our annual meetings.

Speaking of annual meetings, I hope everyone is making their plans for attending the SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo in Baltimore, Maryland, March 12–16. Our Scientific Program Committee has done an outstanding job of developing a rich series of symposia, workshops, and roundtables, among other Scientific Sessions. In addition, with well over 2,000 individual poster and platform presentations, the meeting promises to continue the tradition of our annual meeting as the global showcase for the advancements in our science. See you in Baltimore!

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