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Dear Colleagues,<br>
<br>
It is a remarkable time for Cryo-EM! Given a very successful Cryo-EM
Symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society in
Baltimore last month, the idea arose to create an official Cryo-EM
Subgroup of the Biophysical Society. There would be many advantages
to having such an official subgroup, the principal one being that we
would be able to organize a Subgroup Scientific Meeting every year
on Saturday at the Annual Meeting of the Society. Since > 6,000
people attend these annual meetings (including quite a few cryo-EM
people) the scientific session on Saturday would be a wonderful
forum for presenting new results in methods, techniques and
applications to biological problems. We envision a session that
could be held perhaps 7:30 - 10:00 pm, which would not conflict with
other subgroup meetings, and would allow for five-seven talks that
might be selected from submitted abstracts or from nominations.
There would be many people outside of the cryo-EM community who
would be interested in such talks, and these might be in addition to
the cryo-EM talks that are given within the regular Platform
Sessions and Symposia. The Subgroup would also be able to help
nominate Cryo-EM people for Society awards, as well as help to
increase the visibility of cryo-EM within the Society, since many
cryo-EM people have been associated with the Society for many years.
There are also wonderful opportunities for cryo-EM people to
interact with people using techniques ranging from molecular
dynamics to fluorescence. So we see many benefits to having such a
subgroup, and no downside. <br>
<span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><big><font
color="#000000"> To form this subgroup, we need 100
signatures from current (2015) Regular, Emeritus or Early
Career members of the Society (unfortunately student members
are not counted). To sign this petition, simply send an email
to <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:subgroups@biophysics.org">subgroups@biophysics.org</a>
indicating your support. <br>
<br>
We have created a link that will allow you to see the proposed
bylaws of the subgroup: <br>
<br>
<span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.biophysics.org/CryoEM">http://www.biophysics.org/CryoEM</a><br>
<br>
<big><font color="#000000">If you are a member of the
Society, please sign the petition! If you are not a
member, please join so that you may then sign the
petition!</font></big></span>
<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Bridget Carragher<br>
Yifan Cheng<br>
Edward Egelman (President of the Biophysical Society)<br>
Irina Serysheva<br>
David Stokes<br>
Da-Neng Wang<br>
<br>
</font></big></span><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"></span>
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