November 2018

Dear ASPS members (past and present),

Applications for four prestigious ASPS awards for all career levels have now opened.

The Peter Goldacre Award and the Jan Anderson Award are the premier research awards from ASPS. The Peter Goldacre award is awarded for research contributions for ECRs within 10 years of their active research career, and the Jan Anderson Award specifically recognises the significant contribution of MCR female researchers.

https://www.asps.org.au/awards/jan-anderson-award-and-lecture

https://www.asps.org.au/awards/robertson-fellowship

The R.N. Robertson Travelling Fellowship recognises and celebrates the sustained contribution made by R.N. Robertson (Sir Bob) in nurturing plant scientists. This Fellowship will support graduate research students and recent PhD graduates to undertake research aimed at elucidating plant function and should enhance the current research of the applicant by providing access to expertise and facilities outside of that currently available to them.

https://www.asps.org.au/awards/robertson-fellowship

The ASPS Teaching Award recognises excellence, innovation and/or other contributions with successful learning outcomes to teaching plant science at the University level.

https://www.asps.org.au/awards/teaching-award

More details for each of these awards can be found on the ASPS website. Don’t miss this opportunity to be recognized by the Australian Plant Science community!

Best Regards,

Dr Vanessa Melino

Honorary Secretary, Aust Soc Plant Scientists

Vanessa Melino | Research Fellow

School of Agriculture and Food | Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences

Level 5, Building 184, Royal Parade

The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia

T: +61 3 8344 2550  M: +61 414 596 678

E: vanessa.melino@unimelb.edu.au

twitter.com/unimelb | @vanessa_melino

Hello ASPS members,

We have new PhD scholarship opportunities available through the ASPS job page. You can access these here.

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 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

Special Issue “The Regulatory Functions of Epigenetic Mechanisms in Plants”

Journal Link

Guest Editor:  Dr. Chris Cazzonelli

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.

AgEd Symposium brings together the academic community in agriculture and related disciplines at Australian tertiary and VET institutions.

Themes include developing curriculum to meet industry needs, work integrated learning, entrepreneurship skills, inquiry-oriented approaches for interdisciplinary learning, online & flipped learning.

Ag Ed A4 flyer

Keynote speakers include:

Professor Beverley Oliver (Deakin, Assuring Graduate Outcomes)

Professor Morgan Miles (CSU, Developing Entrepreneurship Skills)

Dr Peter Sale (LTU, Flipping First Year)

To register and submit abstracts please visit:

https://agwine.adelaide.edu.au/ag-ed-symposium/registration/