The Microcirculatory Society, Inc.
Newsletter

Volume 28, Number 1

Summer, 2000

It is indeed an honor and a privilege to serve as President of The Microcirculatory Society. It is also an awesome responsibility. I would like to express my thanks to you for electing me to this office. I would also like to ask you for your active participation in the business of our Society, so that we may succeed in our common goals of excellence in research, scientific exchange and communications.

I would like to thank Ron Tuma for guiding the Society as President last year. Our thanks also go to Paul McDonagh, who - as Treasurer - was able to keep us financially solvent, as well as to Fred Miller and Tom Skalak who provided invaluable assistance as members of Council. I am pleased to welcome Ingrid Sarelius as President-Elect, Ann Baldwin as Treasurer, as well as Steve Segal and Klaus Ley as new Councilors. I am delighted that I will continue to count on the advice and input of Mary Ellsworth as MCS Secretary, Ed Messina, Jim Faber, Jeff Falcone and Bill Mayhan as continuing Councilors during this year.

Bruce Klitzman deserves a special note of recognition and thanks. Bruce had the bright idea of introducing MCS to Cytometrics last year. As a result of this encounter, Cytometrics offered to support this year's Travel Award. We are grateful to Cytometrics for this generous support, and hope that these interactions will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

You will find a hyperlink to Cytometrics and to Fine Science Tools - that supported our Young Investigator Award - on our website. The hyperlinks are the fruits of Bob Gore's excellent work and leadership as MCS webmaster.

The Society confers to the President the privilege of appointing new members to the various committees. The updated roster is found in this Newsletter as well as on our website. In keeping with our Society's tradition, our Committees have a good blend of uprising, mid-career and definitely established investigators to provide the impetus of wild and seasoned ideas in the conduct of business and in the training of the future leadership.

A major challenge facing our Society is recruitment of new members. All initiatives on how to solve this challenge are welcome. Please feel free to contact me and/or the President-Elect, members of the Executive Council and members of the Membership Committee with your suggestions. I submit the following specific goals for your consideration:

• Update, renovate or even redefine the image of the Society. Several investigators perceive MCS as a society that focuses on methodology or technique. We must project strongly MCS as the Society that works on the mechanisms of microvascular biological processes.
  
  
• Campaign actively to recruit members from basic and clinical sciences. While inquiries into fundamental processes are a trademark of the Society, it is clear that many diseases have an ultimate foundation in alterations that occur in the microcirculation (i.e., inflammation, ischemia&endash;reperfusion injury, diabetes mellitus, etc.). In addition, while special emphasis is given to microvascular events, our members investigate a whole spectrum of processes of vascular wall biology, transport, hemodynamics and mathematical modeling that transcend the microcirculation. These considerations support the concept that we should be able to attract our colleagues that are faculty members in clinical departments at our Institutions.

As a way to facilitate recruitment, the Executive Council agreed to expedite the review process. The old-fashioned way was to review and elect new members once or twice a year. The new-fashioned way will be to use the Internet (e-mail) as a means for the Membership Committee, through its Chair, to communicate and to review and approve applications for membership on a rolling basis. A fast turn-around time for the application/decision process should be more attractive to nominees.

A secondary issue or challenge associated with recruitment of new members is payment of membership dues. Active members (Regular/Associate/Students) are defined, among other characteristics, by their status regarding payment of their dues. This status is updated periodically on the Searchable Directory of Members in our website (http://microcirc.org) through communications between the Treasurer and the Webmaster (conveniently located at the same Institution). A brief exploration of the Searchable Directory shows that many prominent and scientifically active members have not taken the time to pay their dues for 2000. I would encourage you to use the Searchable Directory and remind your friends and colleagues in a nice and kind manner to send in their MCS dues to our Treasurer. Please remind them that the membership dues run on a calendar year basis and it is customary for Societies to request and obtain full payment of dues by the first quarter of the fiscal year. The success of several MCS initiatives - including our journal - depends on proper collection of membership dues. Thanks for your assistance in this important MCS fiscal matter.

Another challenge facing our Society is Communications. We should take advantage of the advances in Internet communications to reduce or solve this situation. To facilitate the timeliness of communications, in addition to our Newsletter, we plan to send messages via e-mail to the membership should there be special events, breaking news, etc. I, the members of the Executive Council and Committees are available to the membership through e-mail, as well as through fax and phone, to receive suggestions or provide information. Our addresses are available through the Searchable Directory on the MCS website. A Society will be what its members want it to be, so please let us know your suggestions and initiatives.

At its meeting in San Diego the Executive Council, after a motion by our President-Elect Ingrid Sarelius, agreed to change the President-Elect's Symposium back to the original status of MCS President's Symposium. Thus, once again I will have the privilege of receiving your abstracts and organizing the MCS 2001 meeting, with assistance from the Program Committee and from our Secretary, Mary Ellsworth.

An important element of news regarding MCS 2001 in Orlando:
Subsequent to its meeting in San Diego, and using e-mail communication, Council agreed to add a Young Investigator Session to our Poster sessions. This session is a component of the efforts to attract and recruit young investigators to MCS. This will be a session of oral communications featuring postdoctoral fellows and junior assistant professors (i.e., an operational definition of young investigator). The session will be two-hours long and will be scheduled for Saturday afternoon (1:00 - 3:00 p.m.) just before the President's Symposium (3:15 - 5:15 p.m.). The structure of the session will allow for 8 presentations (10 minute presentation plus 5 minute discussion). Abstracts selected for the oral session will not be eligible for duplicate presentation as posters.

The Young Investigator Session will be organized and run by young investigators. I have asked Dr. Samina Kanwar, a member of our Program Committee to serve as Chair and organizer of the MCS 2001 Young Investigator Session. She, and an ad hoc committee, will make the initial selection of the submitted abstracts. The Program Committee will supervise the final decision. At this time, this announcement is to promote the initiative of providing young investigators an opportunity to make oral presentations. The criteria for abstract selection and the mechanism to mark your work for oral presentation will be announced via e-mail later.

Thanks again for the privilege of working for you as MCS President this year. I reiterate my invitation to you to work with me, with the Executive Council and the Committees for the good of our Society.