Society news briefs: December 2020

Brady, Coulson and Strahl join JBC in 2022

Donita Brady, Elizabeth Coulson and Brian Strahl will become associate editors for the Journal of Biological Chemistry in January. All three are current editorial board members.

Brady is a faculty member at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as assistant dean for inclusion, diversity and equity in research. Her areas of specialty are cell signaling and protein kinases in cancer.

In 2016, she was named a JBC Herbert Tabor Early Career Investigator Award winner. Also, in April, she will give a talk at the 2022 ASBMB Annual Meeting session on signaling titled “Tracing copper utilization by kinase signal transduction pathways: Implications for cancer cell processes.”

Coulson is a group leader at the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research and a professor at the Queensland Brain Institute. She also serves as deputy head of the school of biomedical sciences.

Coulson's lab studies the degeneration that occurs in cholinergic neurons in the brain and spinal cord. She has been a member of the ASBMB since 2013.

Strahl is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, where he also serves as vice chair of the biochemistry and biophysics department. His areas of specialty are chromatin biology and histone modifications. He has been a member of the society since 2005.

Strahl won the ASBMB Young Investigator Award in 2006.

Advocating for open science and security in research enterprise

In early October, the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held an important hearing on balancing open science and research security within the U.S. The ASBMB public affairs staff submitted testimony on this issue urging members of Congress to pass legislation harmonizing disclosure requirements, defining procedures for handling allegations of research misconduct violation, and providing the scientific community with evidence-based reports on research integrity violations. Read the testimony here.

ASBMB welcomes new undergraduate education coordinator

In October, the ASBMB welcomed Tejiri Olafimihan as its new undergraduate education coordinator. In this role, she will support the society’s student chapters, undergraduate poster competition at the annual meeting, degree-accreditation program and certification exam.

“I have been an educator for the past five years, and stepping into this role from the classroom as a STEM educator, I’m excited to continue to champion diversity in the scientific community as well as provide students with different resources and opportunities that will empower them to contribute to the next generation of great scientists,” Olafimihan said. “I look forward to helping bring about incredible change in the field of life sciences.”

Nominations for the ASBMB Honor Society due Jan. 31

Student chapter members are eligible for election into the ASBMB Honor Society, ΧΩΛ. The honor society recognizes juniors and seniors demonstrating exceptional achievement in academics, research and science outreach. For more information and to apply, visit the honor society page on our website.

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