Calendar of events, awards and opportunities

Every week, we update this list with new meetings, awards, scholarships and events to help you advance your career. If you’d like us to feature something that you’re offering to the bioscience community, email us with the subject line “For calendar.” ASBMB members’ offerings take priority, and we do not promote products/services. Learn how to advertise in ASBMB Today.

Oct. 12: Apply for Ben Barres Spotlight Awards

The journal eLife let us know that they're accepting applications through Oct. 12 for their Ben Barres Spotlight Awards, now in their third year. These awards are for researchers at all career stages and "aim to help address that inequality by providing funds and visibility to researchers from groups that are underrepresented in biology and medicine or from countries with limited research funding," according to the award webpage. Applicants can apply for awards up to $6,000, which can be used however the recipients like. See past winners and learn more about the program.

Oct. 14: Becoming a science influencer

The American Association for Anatomy is offering a free webinar titled "The Power of Suggestion: How to Get and Gain Influence" on Oct. 14. Learn how to use story formulas and other techniques to increase your influence, how to measure the effects of your work, and how to set up a promotional campaign to advance your career. Learn more and register.

Oct. 14–15: Inaugural NIH MOSAIC Scholars Meeting

As we've reported (here, here and here), the ASBMB is proud to host members of the inaugural National Institutes of Health MOSAIC cohort. At this October virtual event, you'll hear from NIH Director Francis S. Collins, learn about the MOSAIC (K99/R00) program and hear from scholars themselves about their research. Register for the event. Learn more about ASBMB's program.

Important 2022 ASBMB Annual Meeting deadlines

The ASBMB annual meeting will be held in person in Philadelphia in April. Here are the deadlines you need to know.

Registration

• Feb. 7: Early registration (largest discount) ends
• Feb. 8: Advance registration (smaller but still significant discount) begins
• March 18: Advance registration ends
• March 19: Regular registration begins

Abstracts

• Oct. 15: Deadline for ASBMB’s fast-track program (guaranteed decision within two weeks)
• Nov. 30: Regular submissions end
• Dec. 15: Last-chance submissions begin
• Jan. 27: Last-chance submissions end

Travel awards

• Sept. 15: Applications now accepted
• Dec. 7: Deadline for applications

Oct. 24–29: SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference

The Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science will hold its national meeting Oct. 25–29 online. Registration opens Aug. 2, and SACNAS members get discounts. See what's on the agenda.

Oct. 30: Apply for PALM fellowship

The Promoting Active Learning and Mentoring (PALM) Network is accepting applications from postdocs and faculty members who wish to learn about and get better at implementing evidence-based active learning. This program is supported by the National Science Foundation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, fellows and mentors will participate virtually. Learn more.

Dec. 1: Deadline for HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is accepting applications from underrepresented scientists for its Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program. Up to 25 fellows will win grants for postdoctoral training and will be eligible for continued funding as they begin their independent careers. Learn about eligibility and application materials.

Jan. 2: AAAS mass media fellowship application due

The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship has earned much praise over the years for training scientists to become professional science writers and communicators. The application period for the next 10-week summer program is Jan. 2. We strongly encourage emerging scicommers, in particular those who wish to work in newsrooms, to consider applying. Learn more about the program.

Jan. 10: Submit an abstract for the ASBMB Deuel Conference on Lipids

The ASBMB Deuel conference is a must-attend event for leading lipids investigators — and for scientists who’ve just begun to explore the role of lipids in their research programs. This event will bring together a diverse array of people — including those who have not attended Deuel or perhaps any lipid meeting before.

The meeting will be held March 1–4 in Monterey, Calif.

“We'd love to bring in people who might not have cut their teeth in the lipid metabolism field but have found their way to studying lipids. In many cases, that's where you get the most exciting, unusual and off-the-wall presentations, and that can spark collaborations that may have otherwise not have happened,” explains co-organizer Russell DeBose-Boyd.

This year's theme is "Location, location, location: How lipid trafficking impacts cell signaling and metabolism."

Co-organizer Arun Radhakrishnan explains it this way: “In recent years, we have begun to gain deep insights into the mechanisms of lipid trafficking. We thought it would be great to have a meeting focusing on that aspect and what those what these new insights are telling us about cell signaling and metabolism.”

Abstracts are being accepted through Jan. 10. See the program and submit.

Jan. 23: Deadline for papers about STEM education and workforce

The Journal of Science Policy & Governance and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, have launched a call for papers on "Re-envisioning STEM Education and Workforce Development for the 21st Century." The journal will produce a special issue with the winning submissions. The deadline is Jan. 23. ASBMB Today contributor Adriana Bankston is the journal's CEO and managing publiusher. She told us in an email: "For the issue, we are seeking op-eds and policy position papers for re-envisioning the landscape in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and building forward a future that is focused on equity and inclusion, access to technology, and aligning training opportunities with workforce demands. First, second and third place competition winners will be awarded cash prizes." Here's the call for submissions.

Call for virtual scientific event proposals

The ASBMB provides members with a virtual platform to share scientific research and accomplishments and to discuss emerging topics and technologies with the BMB community.

The ASBMB will manage the technical aspects, market the event to tens of thousands of contacts and present the digital event live to a remote audience. Additional tools such as polling, Q&A, breakout rooms and post event Twitter chats may be used to facilitate maximum engagement.

Seminars are typically one to two hours long. A workshop or conference might be longer and even span several days.

Prospective organizers may submit proposals at any time. Decisions are usually made within four to six weeks. 

Propose an event.

Evolution and core processes in gene expression

Coming to an in-person venue in the summer of 2022: The focus of this meeting is to discuss the most recent insights into the cis-regulatory code, how cis-regulatory information is read out by transcription factors, signaling pathways and other proteins, how cellular diversity is created during development and how we can study this problem using cutting-edge genomics technology and computational methods.

The meeting will simultaneously examine the problem from an evolutionary perspective: how cis-regulatory elements evolve, how regulatory variation affects gene expression and phenotypes, how these changes have shaped development and parallel evolution, and how noise affects regulatory circuits and their evolution.

Stay tuned for abstract and registration deadlines.

Who among you loves tweeting about lipids?

The ASBMB's Journal of Lipid Research invites graduate students, postdocs and early-career investigators to take over the JLR Twitter account (@jlipidres) for a day apiece to talk about their favorite lipids. To express interest, fill out the JLR #LipidTakeover application. Also, the ASBMB Lipid Research Division just started its own Twitter feed. Check it out at @AsbmbLrd.