SGB/SSB/SSB: Swiss Society for Biochemistry

As in previous years, the primary activity of the Swiss Society for Biochemistry (SSB) in 2010 has been to coordinate the various activities of its current 594 members. More specifically, during the 2010 USGEB meeting which took place on the 11th & 12th of February in Lugano, our Society ran its own symposium entitled ’Frontiers in GPCR Research: From Love to Understanding’. Also during that meeting the 2010 Friedrich-Miescher Award  sponsored by our Society was presented to Professor Henrik Kaessmann from the University of Lausanne. In addition, our Society financially supported the symposium ’Frontiers in Biomedical Research’ organized by the Friedrich Miescher Institute in the course of its 40^th anniversary held in fall of 2010 in Basel. Similar to previous years, in 2010 we granted eight travel fellowships to young members of our Society.

During the 2010 USGEB meeting Frontiers in Human Biology which took place on the 11th & 12th of February in Lugano, our Society ran its own symposium entitled ’Frontiers in GPCR Research: From Love to Understanding’. This symposium was organized by our secretary, Prof. Marcus Thelen. The program featured three invited speakers (Martin Lohse, Würzburg, Germany; Klaus Seuwen, Basel; and Horst Vogel, Lausanne).

In addition, our Society financially supported the symposium ’Frontiers in Biomedical Research’ organized by the Friedrich Miescher Institute in the course of its 40^th anniversary held in fall of 2010 in Basel.

A)   During the USGEB meeting the 2010 Friedrich-Miescher Award  sponsored by our Society was presented to Professor Henrik Kaessmann from the University of Lausanne for his seminal contributions pointing the way to the functional evolutionary genomics of humans and other mammals.

B)   In 2010, our secretary Prof. Marcus Thelen was the representative of our Society at the annual Council meeting of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) that was held in the course of the 34^th FEBS Annual Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden. Among other issues, the FEBS Council decided about the future venues of the Annual Congress. Accordingly, the next FEBS Annual Congress will be held in June 2011 in Torino, Italy.

An important issue concerns the travel fellowships to young members of our Society. In 2010, we received a total of 10 applications from which eight were supported. Our Society is a member of SCNAT’s Platform Biology. In the past, our Society has been sponsoring travel fellowships to both PhD students and junior postdocs. However, the Executive committee of the Platform Biology on its 2009 meeting decided to limit its future travel support to PhD students only. In contrast, the SSB board believes that the support of junior postdocs is important for their future scientific carrier. Currently, we are in the process of clarifying how and to what extent these students may be supported in the future.