ASPS dinner at ComBio2018

Dear ASPS member,

We hope to see you at the coming ComBio2018 in our spectacular city of Sydney.

If so, you might be interested to attend a dinner where you can discuss collaborative research and networking sitting with fellow scientists while enjoying magnificent Darling Harbour views with delicious food at a very affordable price!

We are organising this year’s ASPS dinner which will be held on Tuesday, 25^th September at Zaaffran Restaurant. (https://www.zaaffran.com/). You can sit and enjoy this harbourside restaurant where you will be amused by a marvellous Darling Harbour night view. It just a three minute harbour side walk from the ComBio2018 conference centre.   It is well worth a visit, so come along to refresh your mind after a long day full of scientific sessions and enjoy some good food and company.

This year the menu will be a three course Indian dinner with open bar with juice, soft drinks, red and white wine. We are offering you a high standard dinner at a very reasonable price, thanks to ASPS for the subsidy. The cost per ticket will be:

• Students: $30
• Academics and guests: $60

You can book your spot by emailing Kamal (kamal.uddin@sydney.edu.au) who will reply to you shortly, with the payment details and confirm your reservation after payment. Don’t forget to mention any dietary requirement in your email during booking.

For catering purposes we need to know the numbers in advance. So, if you really want to attend the ASPS dinner, please reserve your place and make your payment before Friday, 14^th September.

We only have a limited number of tickets, so please don’t wait for the last moment to book your spot.

We looking forward to see you all at ComBio2018.

Warm regards,

ASPS Dinner Organising Committee

News

Recently ASPS has become affiliated with two MDPI journals, International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS) and Plants. The benefits for ASPS members are as follows:

1. A 15% discount* on the article processing charges will apply to ASPS members to publish in IJMS and Plants. A limited number of full fee waivers for special cases can also be discussed and agreed on;
2. A discount on the article processing charges for selected papers collected from ASPS conferences can be agreed on a case by case basis for non-members;
3. Meeting reports of ASPS conferences will be published free of charge in IJMS and Plants;
4. Discounted publication fees for open access books;
5. Sciforum.net platform for organizing ASPS conferences and conference organizing services at preferential rates. ASPS as well as each of its members will be able to use the platform free of charge if self-managed;
6. Promotion of ASPS conference on the journal homepages;
7. IJMS and/or Plants will sponsor different activities at the ASPS conferences (e.g. keynote speaker, travel grant for PhD students or Postdocs, best poster awards, coffee breaks, etc.) depending on the annual marketing budget of the journals;
8. The possibility to advertise the society news on the website of the journals and social media;
9. The possibility for the society and its members to post job announcements free of charge on the websites of IJMS and Plants.

The specific information about IJMS and Plants can be found below

The International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS, ISSN 1422-0067, Impact Factor: 3.226) provides an advanced forum for molecular studies in biology, chemistry and biophysics. Our aim is to provide rigorous peer review and enable rapid publication of cutting-edge research to educate and inspire the scientific community worldwide. IJMS is indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science), MEDLINE (PubMed) and other important databases. Manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 18 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 6.5 days (median values for papers published in 2017).

Plants (ISSN 2223-7747; CODEN: PLANCD) is an open access journal of plant science. Our aim is to encourage scientists and research groups to publish theoretical and experimental results of research in all fundamental and applied fields of plant science. Plants is indexed in BIOSIS Previews (Clarivate Analytics), Scopus and other important databases. Citations are available in PubMed and full-text are archived in PubMed Central. Manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision provided to authors approximately 20 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 5.8 days (median values for papers published in 2017).

Hello ASPS members,

Today is the last day you can register for ComBio2018 and receive the early bird discount. http://www.combio.org.au/combio2018/

If you need to renew your ASPS membership you can use the e-mail address this newsletter was sent to as you login to reset your password then simply renew to get the discounted ASPS member rate. https://www.asps.org.au/renewal 

It will be the ASPS 60th anniversary at ComBio2018 so come and be part of our history.

Hello ASPS members,

ComBio2018 will mark the 60th anniversary of our society and is a great opportunity for the next generation of plant scientists to share their research and passion for plants with our community. As a society we provide travel grants to support our student members to attend ComBio.  If you are a student attending ComBio or the supervisor of a student attending ComBio this year apply for a travel grant by COB June 15th 2018.

Further details can be found at the ASPS ComBio travel grant web page.

ComBio2018: 23 – 26 September 2018, International Convention Centre Sydney, Darling Harbour
Early Registration & Abstract Deadline: Friday, 22 June 2018

We are pleased to advise that the Program Timetable and the Provisional Symposium Schedule can be downloaded from:
http://www.combio.org.au/combio2018/program.html
The Provisional Symposium Schedule includes the Stream Co-ordinators, the titles of each of the 73 sessions and the Chairs of each of the sessions.

Online registration and abstract submission will be available towards the end of April 2018 and we will send a further email when these pages are live. The early registration and abstract submission deadline is 22 June 2018.

ComBio2018 is a combination of six societies holding their annual meetings with the International Society of Differentiation partnering with the Australia and New Zealand Society of Cell and Developmental Biology, and the New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the New Zealand Society of Plant Biologists joining in with the Australian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Australian Society of Plant Scientists.

The ASBMB Grimwade Keynote Plenary Lecturer is Randy Wayne Schekman. Professor Schekman is a Nobel Prize-winning American professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley whose research in vesicular trafficking is highly relevant across both plant and animal systems. The ASPS is pleased to support two plenary lectures, including the R.N. Robertson Award & Lecture, which will be given by Dr Michael Udvardi (Noble Research Institute) and the ASPS Jan Anderson Award & Lecture (speaker TBC). The ASPS in conjunction the Annals of Botany and Functional Plant Biology will deliver the Annals of Botany Lecture to be given by Professor Keiko Torii (University of Washington) and the ASPS Peter Goldacre Award Dr Caitlin Byrt. The names and institutions of all confirmed international plenary speakers can be seen at: http://www.combio.org.au/combio2018/plenary.html

Hello ASPS members past and present,

COMBIO 2019, (23th-26th September) in Sydney, will be the venue of our annual meeting held in our 60th Anniversary year of ASPS.

As well as the science sessions at COMBIO we will have 2 events for ASPS, the ASPS dinner which will be held on the Tuesday night – you will be hearing about this event very soon – and the AGM which will be held on the Wednesday lunch.

We hope you can all attend and make this a special COMBIO in our anniversary year.

Furthermore, we are looking for volunteers to help us to continue in our role in assisting and shaping the future of the Australian Plant Science community? If you have ideas of how to build and strengthen our community, please consider joining the ASPS exec.

We are looking to fill 3 vacancies this year:

Honorary Secretary

Honorary Treasurer

Plant-Microbe Interactions rep

If you are keen on taking on one of these roles please fill out the attached form.

We look forward to your involvement.

Many thanks,

Matt

_________________

Professor Matthew Gilliham

Honorary Secretary, Aust Soc Plant Scientists

Dear All,

It is our pleasure to announce two major ASPS awards – the 2018 Peter Goldacre Award and the inaugural Jan Anderson Award.

These are the premier research awards from ASPS in a calendar year. The Peter Goldacre award is awarded for research contributions for ECRs within 10 years of their active research career, and the Jan Anderson Award is a new award specifically for MCR female researchers. Both award have been named after researchers and are supported by donations. More details can be found on the ASPS website.

It is our pleasure to announce the following awardees.

Dr Caitlin Byrt (University of Adelaide) – Goldacre Awardee 2018

Dr Eloise Foo (University of Tasmania) – Jan Anderson Awardee 2018

Both Caitlin and Eloise have been invited to receive their awards, and give their award lecture, at COMBIO 2018 to be held in Sydney this September. Many congratulations to both of you on your significant research achievements on behalf of ASPS.

Please register for COMBIO if you haven’t already to support Australian plant sciences and discuss your research with your peers.

It was extremely difficult to pick a single winner for both awards this year, due to the extremely high quality of nominees. This bodes well for the future of Plant Sciences in this country, but it also means that some very talented researchers have missed out on the awards. ASPS would like to congratulate all nominees for the quality of their applications and their contributions to plant science research. This is one reason we felt there should be an additional award starting this year, as many of our talented researchers are deserving of extra recognition. We are also looking to role out discipline specific awards from 2019.

Best Regards,

Professor Matthew Gilliham

Honorary Secretary, Aust Soc Plant Scientists

We have several employment opportunities posted on the ASPS job board here.

Dear ASPS Past and Present Members

We are pleased to advise that the photographs from ComBio2017 can now be viewed at: http://www.combio.org.au/combio2017/

ComBio2018: 23 – 26 September 2018, International Convention Centre Sydney, Darling Harbour
Early Registration & Abstract Deadline: Friday, 22 June 2018

We are pleased to advise that the Program Timetable and the Provisional Symposium Schedule can be downloaded from:
http://www.combio.org.au/combio2018/program.html
The Provisional Symposium Schedule includes the Stream Co-ordinators, the titles of each of the 73 sessions and the Chairs of each of the sessions.

Online registration and abstract submission will be available towards the end of April 2018 and we will send a further email when these pages are live. The early registration and abstract submission deadline is 22 June 2018.

ComBio2018 is a combination of six societies holding their annual meetings with the International Society of Differentiation partnering with the Australia and New Zealand Society of Cell and Developmental Biology, and the New Zealand Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the New Zealand Society of Plant Biologists joining in with the Australian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Australian Society of Plant Scientists.

The ASBMB Grimwade Keynote Plenary Lecturer is Randy Wayne Schekman. Professor Schekman is a Nobel Prize-winning American professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley whose research in vesicular trafficking is highly relevant across both plant and animal systems. The ASPS is pleased to support two plenary lectures, including the R.N. Robertson Award & Lecture, which will be given by Dr Michael Udvardi (Noble Research Institute) and the ASPS Jan Anderson Award & Lecture (speaker TBC). The ASPS in conjunction the Annals of Botany and Functional Plant Biology will deliver the Annals of Botany Lecture to be given by Professor Keiko Torii (University of Washington) and the ASPS Peter Goldacre Award (speaker TBC). The names and institutions of all confirmed international plenary speakers can be seen at: http://www.combio.org.au/combio2018/plenary.html

Kind regards
Sally

Sally Jay
ASBMB National Office
ComBio2018 Secretariat

Hello ASPS members,

We have several new employment opportunities that have been posted on our job board.

Job Board

Hello ASPS members,

We have several new employment opportunities available here.