Report of the Latest Virus Division Business Meeting

 

Report of the SIP Virus Division Business Meeting
July 12, 2010, Trabzon, Turkey

The Virus Division Business Meeting was attended by 52 members. The meeting was chaired by the Chair Bryony Bonning, and the Secretary/Treasurer Kelli Hoover recorded the meeting minutes.

Chair’s Report

Summary of Virus Division activities at the Trabzon meeting 2010:
The Virus Division sponsored two symposia at the Trabzon meeting

• The application of insect viruses in medicine
• Arthropod transmitted viral disease

In addition, the division sponsored one cross-divisional symposium and a workshop held after the business meeting

• Viruses of pollinators (with Diseases of Beneficial Invertebrates, DBI)
• Workshop “Bioinformatics: CoGe”.

There were 48 contributed oral presentations, 12 of which were student presentations. There were 33 poster presentations, of which 12 were student presentations.

Bioinformatics Workshop

Dr. Eric Haas-Stapleton organized a pre-meeting bioinformatics workshop “8000 Genomes at your Fingertips: Comparative Genomics using CoGe”, with Dr. Eric Lyons as instructor. The workshop was held on Sunday, July 11th and was attended by 24 participants, including 9 students. Proceeds from this workshop were used to pay for Dr. Lyon’s attendance of the SIP meeting, with the remainder going toward the Virus Division fund.

Membership:
In 2010 there were 90 regular members and 13 student members (as of April).

Student travel awards for the 2010 meeting
Nine applications were submitted for student travel awards to the Virus Division. The Virus division awarded three travel awards at $500 each to Ke Peng, Maria Leticia Ferrelli and Magdalena Biernat. The Virus Division’s top travel award winner, Umut Toprak, was nominated for and received the Martignoni award. 

Treasurer’s Report

Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2009
The financial information was reported by Kelli Hoover. The treasurer’s report was given indicating that as of April 30, 2010 the balance in our account is $4,834. Details follow:

FUND BALANCE April 30, 2009: $ 4,433
Income
$   750 for student awards
$     89 from interest at 2%
$   951 profit from cell culture workshop
$1,386 from membership dues May 1, 2009 to April 1, 2010 (90 regular and 13 students)
$   400 from industry sponsorship
Total Income $3,176

Expenses for 2009 SIP meeting

$1,300.00 for Student Travel Awards 2009
$1,475.00 for Speaker Travel funding 2009
Total Expenses $2,775

Net Income: $401

Fund Balance as of April 30, 2010: $ 4,834

We expect to make a profit from the Bioinformatics Workshop, but the numbers are not available yet on all of the expenses.

 Student Report
Student representative Agah Ince gave a short report, highlighting the advantages of student membership in the division and the society as a whole.

Election of Officers

• The previous chair-elect, Monique van Oers will take over the Chair position from Bryony Bonning
• Lorena Passarelli was appointed by a unanimous vote as the new chair-elect
• Nor Chejanovsky was elected by a unanimous vote to the position of Secretary/Treasurer
• Tuğba Erdoğan, Turkey was nominated as the second student representative for the division, and the vote on this appointment was unanimous
• There were two nominees for member-at-large: Bergmann Ribeiro and Sassan Asgari. Sassan Asgari was elected by the majority.

The Virus Division Executive Committee
Chair:                                      Monique van Oers (2010-2012)
Chair Elect:                             Lorena Passarelli (2010-2012)
Secretary/Treasurer:                Nor Chejanovsky (2010-2012)
Member-at-Large:                   Karyn Johnson (2009-2011) 
                                                Sassan Asgari (2010-2012) 
                                               
Symposia 2011
A call for symposium proposals for the 2011 SIP meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia was sent to Virus Division members in May by the chair of the division and resulted in four full proposals. At the business meeting, suggestions for additional symposia were solicited. The four proposals considered were:

• Viruses of Aquatic Invertebrates (proposed by Karyn Johnson as a cross-divisional symposium with DBI)
• Forest Insect Viral Diseases (proposed by Peter Krell and Kelli Hoover: In honor of Basil Arif)
• Polydnaviruses (proposed by Don Stoltz)
• Pathology of Insect-Virus Interactions (proposed by Eric Haas-Stapleton and Bryony Bonning)

The cross-divisional symposium received unanimous support. To narrow the remaining three symposia down to the two allowed per division, each member voted once for the symposium they least wanted. The Forest Insect Viral Diseases symposium received unanimous support, while the Polydnavirus symposium received the least support. A signficant influence on this outcome was that symposia on polydnaviruses were held in 2009 and 2005.

Workshop 2011

A workshop on Virus Taxonomy was proposed for the 2011 post business meeting workshop, and will be organized by Peter Krell. A society (non-divisional) workshop on Field Identification of Insect Pathogens will also be held on the Sunday prior to the 2011 meeting. This workshop will be organized by Ann Hajek.

Other Business
Discussion ensued on the possibility of limiting the number of Virus Division contributed paper sessions as the meetings have become too intense for members of the Virus Division. The new Chair of the division plans to work with the 2011 Program Chairs to reduce the numbers of Virus Division contributed oral paper sessions.  

Respectfully submitted by Kelli Hoover, Virus Division Secretary/Treasurer and Bryony Bonning, former Virus Division Chair (August 5, 2010).