with the overarching goal that we wish to identify a scientist whom we are proud to hold up as a model. We can award the prize to one or two scientists in the same year, but only one field.
* DBIO Chair attends meetings ex officio to confirm diversity is carefully discussed. DBIO Chair only votes in case of deadlock. Otherwise, the committee has no discussion with the Excomm to ensure independence.
* Committee chair forwards a decision and report to Excomm. The decision is not to be shared with anyone else, including awardee, until DBIO approval. It is easy to forget this, so the committee chair firmly instructs the committee. DBIO Chair approves, committee chair then submits decision to APS, then wait for APS approval.
Nothing to report.
- Committee Composition
According to the by-law:
“The Program Committee shall consist of the Chair-Elect, the Chair, the Vice-Chair, the Secretary-Treasurer, and three Members-at-Large appointed by the Chair, upon the recommendation of the Chair-Elect, to staggered three-year terms. “
2019 committee:
Phil Nelson (Chair, program chair for DBIO March 2020) Margaret Gardel (2021 chair)
Vernita Gordon (DBIO Sec/Tres) Meredith Betterton
Eva-Maria S. Collins Jeff Gore
Moumita Das Alexandre Morozov
2020 committee:
Margaret Gardel (Chair, program chair for DBIO March 2021), Margaret Cheung (2022 chair), Huan-Xiang Zhou (DBIO Sec/Tres), Mingming Wu, Taviare Hawkins, Orit Peleg, Moumita Das
2021 committee:
Margaret Cheung (Chair, program chair for DBIO March 2022), Josh Shaevitz (2023 program chair), Margaret Gardel (2021 program chair), Moumita Das, Omar Saleh, Taras Pogorelov, Serena Bradde
The By-law does not identify the size of the program committee. Therefore, a few non-ExeCom members (Omar Saleh, Taras Pogorelov, Serena Bradde) were added to stand in for the MALs who declined to serve on the 2021 program committee. It has been very beneficial to have non-ExeCom members who provided diverse vantage points on scientific programs, which in turn forged strong connections to the societal Physical Review journals. A few biophysics Physical Review editors volunteered to serve on the DBIO Program Committees for future MMs.
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Topics Solicitation by Opting in APS’ “Invited Nomination System”
The APS MM logistics team provided the quota of Invited Sessions for each unit for MM22. The APS MM estimated the number of the focus sessions for each unit based on the size of participation over the past 5 years. The APS didn’t impose a hard cap on the number of focus sessions. The number of focus sessions will depend on
Right after the MM, the APS MM Logistics team held a zoom meeting for all Unit Program Chairs. They strongly recommended that the unit program chairs coordinated the logistics with the APS regarding the timelines for soliciting topics and for selecting invited speakers. For MM21, several large units have opted in the APS’ nomination system ( DQI, DCMP, DCP, DAMOP, DCOMP, DQI, FIP, GMAG, GSNP, and GDS.).
In the past, the DBIO Program Committee had its own timeline by coordinating the logistics with other unit program chairs (DSOFT/DPOLY). We solicited topics from our own unit memberships. We more or less consolidated the focus topics and actively co-sponsored the related focus topics from each other.
The DBIO program committee set several criteria for selecting topics for the Invited sessions. The Program Committee finalized the selections of topics (with the selection of invited speakers) for both the invited and focus sessions by the end of May.
What’s New in MM2022? We Opted in the APS’ “Invited Nomination Systems” in early May. The APS logistics team has provided a table of roll-out deadlines for soliciting topics of Focus and Invited sessions, the nomination of invited speakers, and the selection of the invited speakers over several months until mid-summer. These roll-out deadlines alleviate the stress to complete the selection of topics and invited speakers on the same deadline by allowing broader participation of unit members to organically form focus topics first and then nominate invited speakers a few weeks later.
We also invited the focus session organizers to be part of the program committee. The heavy workload of abstract sorting was shared by 60+ members. Co-organizers have more autonomy in building their sessions and “Power to the Players”.
The Program Chair was able to spend more time on strategic planning and coordinating. The solicitation of Focus topics is more about sciences and less about the invited speakers.
The APS Chair’s handbook has clear instructions about how to select topics for the Focus and the Invited Sessions using the Nomination System. The decision should not be arbitrarily done by the Program Committee. We basically accept as many as the Focus Sessions that are reasonable. The number of the invited Sessions, however, is determined by the APS according to the attendance of the previous MM. For MM22, we have enlisted all focus session organizers as sorters who participated in the Phase 1 sorting. It will be helpful if we can identify “Lead Sorters” early in this process. Lead Sorters can encourage other sorters to tweak the topics of the Focus and Invited Sessions. From Margaret C’ experience, not all sorters were open to collaboration at this stage. A few, however, welcomed it to save their time and effort by joining with other sorters.
- Timeline of Activities
After March Meeting 2021: The Program Chair created the google excel sheet and shared it with the program committee about the timeline of activities.
Apr 28th: Virtual APS Program Meeting and received the MM 22 handbook (link)
May 1st: Opted in the Invited Nomination Systems for the first time
May 2nd: Emailed DPOLY/DSOFT/DFD/GNSP program chairs to coordinate on topics that is necessary (we don’t want to do that excessively as it negatively impacts the room assignment)
May 6th: First Program Committee Meeting:
(1) Announced deadlines (2) Pruned sorting categories by using last years' focus session stats (3) Created three google forms (see 4. Soliciting Sessions) (4) Schedule another zoom meeting on June 2 or 3 to discuss the focus topics and submit the list to APS by June 4 (5) Josh took over logistics for Tutorials (6) No more waived fee for invited senior speakers (6) Invited newly elected APS Fellows as invited speakers in focus sessions where topics are relevant.
May 30th: Deadlines for soliciting topics from DBIO members.
Jun 2nd: At the 2nd Program Committee Meeting (DBIO MM), we finalized the selections of topics for the Focus and the Invited sessions, without an active attempt to consolidate topics from three google forms. We also kept the topics of categories in standard sessions quite broad to capture the abstracts that won’t fit into specific Focus topics.
Jun 3th: Program Chair emailed organizers whose invited sessions were not selected and offered them the opportunity to turn invited sessions into focus sessions. Emailed focus session organizers (returning and new topics). Emailed other unit sessions for cross-listing.
Jun 4th: Program Chair submitted the list of topics (focus, invited, and standard) on a google sheet to the APS. Each accepted focus topic can grow into multiple sessions when the topics are oversubscribed. Each session (of focus topics) has 1 slot for the invited speaker. If the number of the sessions (of focus topics) grows by N, then the number of the invited speakers grows by N. However, because there is no way to know in advance whether the focus topics will be overscribed or not, we can nominate several invited speakers and assign some of them as “alternative” invited speakers.
Jul 6th: APS opened the website for the individual nomination of invited speakers.
Jul 15th: Program Chair submitted the descriptions of the Focus Topics on a google sheet to the APS. The co-organizers copied and pasted the descriptions from the last cycle, or wrote a new one.
Aug 9th: APS MM abstract submission open. The Program Chair placed the selected invited speakers (in planstone) from the nominated invited speakers (on a google sheet)
Aug 13th: APS closed the website for the individual nomination of invited speakers. The nominated invited speakers do not have to commit to come to the MM. If they do, great. If not, other nominated invited speakers can be alternatives. Next, selection of the invited speakers begin. Program Chair reviewed the topics/demography of the invited speakers and nominated 4 more invited speakers from under-presented groups.
Sep 17th: Soft deadlines for the Program Chair to enter the selected invited speakers to planstone.
Sep 28th: At the MM Program Chair Meeting we placed the invited sessions on the grids of the program. The APS rotated the Friday grids among units. DBIO received one for MM22.
Oct 1st: The DBIO launched the “Tweetorial” allowing the focus session organizers to advertise their Focus Sessions in 5-10 tweets.
Oct 12th: The program chair sent the APS a list of names from 60 sorters and assigned 8 as lead sorters. All sorters participated in Phase 1. Only Lead sorters were needed for Phase 2.
Oct 20th: The APS has announced Award winners. So the Program Chair has started to put together the last Symposium with the Delbruck winner (Terry Hwa). Also invited the new APS DBIO Fellows as invited speakers (only if they did not give an invited talk in MM21).
Oct 20th: APS emailed invited speakers with formal invitations.
Oct 27th: MM oral and poster abstracts submission closed. Each member can have one oral and one poster submission. The oral presentation will be “contributed talks”
Nov 3rd: The APS has solicited names for several travel/lectureship awards for the MM. The Program Chair nominated Prof Roselin Allen for the Beller lectureship and she won. The Program nominatedPror. Saraswathi Vishveshwara from India for the Marshak Lectureship but she didn’t win.
Nov 3rd: Sorting Phase 1. All sorters. We received training from the APS. Remind the sorters not to send DBIO abstracts to other units without consulting with the Program Chair. The total number of abstracts in the program will determine conference room allocations.
(1) Please review the 12-minute tutorial video first. (This is really helpful).
Video Demonstration: https://apsphysics.zoom.us/rec/share/5SP_jOUzjgP67q7KiD6is_3CU_j5-66tzZRGP6jLORvWFCB8LTe9yPLY1rN_mn4.LkVEaDFXmBQfERhQ?startTime=1637244634000"
(2) Please check if the abstracts from your invited speakers are indeed on the google sheet. If not, please reach out to me ASAP by email and I will get the APS to resend the links to the invited speakers. We need to have them in the database before the Phase 2 sorters' meeting by Dec 2nd.
(3) If you plan to promote a contributed talk to an invited one on the google sheet, please (1) highlight that row in yellow and (2) send me an email for this change because the APS needs to manually change the setting in the system.
(4) If your session is oversubscribed (you have more abstracts to fit into one session), please create a second session by labeling the abbreviations with roman numerals (eg. COVID I, COVID II, etc)
(5) A typical session is 1 invited talk and 12 contributed talks. Incomplete sessions will be later consolidated in Phase 2 by lead sorters.
(6) Update: Please don't use the Exchange Bin to swap abstracts in Phase 1. They can disappear without a trace quickly....
(7) Select a session chair who can physically be in the room to manually switch talks delivered in person or virtual.
(8) Place international speakers last in the presentation order, in case some of them cannot come to the US due to covid restrictions.
(9) You can pull oral abstracts relating to your own Focus Topics from the Standard Categories (from 04.03.00 to 04.12.00) to fill your Session. In Phase 1 you are welcome to collaborate with other designated Focus Session sorters (within the DBIO) for consolidating the sessions with related topics. Please not pull abstracts from other Focus Sessions without reaching out to their sorters first at this stage.
04.03.00 Microbiological Physics (bacteria, viruses, fungi)
04.04.00 Cellular Biophysics (structure, mechanics, dynamics)
04.05.00 Physics of Cancer
04.06.00 Single-Molecule Techniques
04.07.00 Membranes and channels
04.08.00 Noise and Stochasticity in Biology
04.09.00 Biopolymers (DNA, RNA, biocompatible, gels)
04.10.00 Nanoscale biophysics
04.11.00 Proteins (globular, enzymes, structured, unstructured)
04.12.00 Biological Networks
(10) You can slightly modify the full title of your Focus Session if you wish, especially for those consolidated ones.
(11) If a DBIO abstract has a molecular component and do not fit your session, please sort them into other related FOCUS sessions that have the molecular components within DBIO as the first option. Or ping Margaret Cheung. (Please move our abstracts within the Focus Session primarily sponsored by theDBIO unit as best as you can, so we don't lose the total count of the DBIO abstracts)
(12) If there is a request for abstracts by a sorter from another Unit, please ping Margaret Cheung before you reply. I will work with the Program Chair from the other Unit and make sure that the DBIO's co-sponsorship is accounted for. Typically these agreements to share abstracts among cosponsoring Focus Sessions were achieved by Unit Program Chairs. Thank you.
Dec 3rd: Sorting Phase 2 involves only lead sorters. 8 Lead sorters compacted the program by combining uneven focus sessions (1 invited talk + 12 short talks), or turning them into contributed sessions (15 short talks).
Because the DBIO was oversubscribed and may be in danger of running out of conference rooms, we were advised to compress 80+ sessions down to 70+ in order to use all of the allotted space. During this time, the Program Chair emailed the APS MM logistics director (Donna Greene), Meeting director (Hunter Clemson), as well as DBIO counsilor Daniel Fisher to resolve the problem with an oversubscribed program. At the end, the APS Logistics team gave us 5 concurrent conference rooms without having to share with other units.
This process of consolidating sessions and moving the sorted order of presentations from google sheet to planestone lasted a few weeks until the end of December.
Jan - Feb 2022:
- The Program Chair has been communicating with stakeholders about error corrections on the bulletin and identifying session chairs who can be physically at the meeting.
- Program Committee members worked with the DBIO Unit Chair, the membership committee, and the community engagement committee for setting up tables and on-line networking events.
- Start updating this file – you’ll need to prepare your report for the business meeting!
Mar 2022:
- The APS will train Session Chairs.
- Present summary at Tuesday business meeting
- Check on DBIO Sessions on the bulletin.
- Send surveys to session chairs and organizers and ask them about the session: Room Size, Attendance, What worked? What didn’t?
The Program Chair has declined several requests of waiving registration fees for the invited speakers. A few organizers have managed to raise funding for their invited speakers. The APS Logistics team was able to help with connecting them to the APS Registration team.
The DBIO followed the Planning Schedule Provided by the APS in the Program Chair’s handbook. The Schedule is below. The Program Chair MUST READ the hand-book.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A6dM3R9pppTGQuvFAWrbluV3J6MMuPBx6l2o4ZsQkh4/edit?usp=sharing
Program Committee Planning Schedule/Scientific Program Deadlines
2021
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Deadlines
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Action Items
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Wednesday, April 21
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APS sends Program Handbook to the Program Committee
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Thursday, April 29
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Solicit unit input whether they will be using the Invited Nomination System
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Thursday, May 6
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Deadline to request use of the APS Invited Nomination System
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Friday, May 7
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Ask units for sorting categories
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Tuesday, June 1
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Remind units that sorting categories are due soon
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Friday, June 4
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Final Sorting Categories including the Focus Topics and the Standard Topics from units due to Terrance Morrison (apsmtgs-march@aps.org)
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Friday, June 4
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APS sends reminder to unit officers and chairs to produce membership message notifying that nominations of invited speakers open soon
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Thursday, July 6
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Symposium/Speaker (selections) nominations opens in Abstract System (It means that the solicitation of Focus topics is more about sciences and less about the speakers.
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Wednesday, July 7
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Ask unit chairs to submit tutorial information to Kieran Mullen (kieran@ou.edu)
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Thursday, July 22
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Focus session descriptions due to Terrance Morrison
(apsmtgs-march@aps.org)
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Thursday, July 22
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Deadline to submit proposals for tutorials to Tutorial Chair, Kieran Mullen (kieran@ou.edu)
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Tuesday, August 3
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Abstract System opens up for March Meeting Program Committee to enter invited speaker and invited symposium selections
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Monday, August 9
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First March Meeting announcement and call for abstracts published on the Meetings website
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Friday, August 13
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Deadline for invited nominations of SPEAKERS through the Abstract System
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Friday, August 20
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Final information on tutorials due from Kieran Mullen to Ebony Adams (adams@aps.org) and Vinaya Sathyasheelappa (vinaya@aps.org)
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Friday, August 20
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Deadline to submit Unit Short Course due to Vinaya Sathyasheelappa (vinaya@aps.org)
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Friday, August 27
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APS releases preliminary symposia grid
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|
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Friday, September 17
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Deadline for program chairs to enter all invited speaker and symposium information into ScholarOne
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Tuesday, September 28
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March Meeting Program Committee meets to discuss symposia grid, via videoconference (11:00a.m. EST)
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Wednesday, September 29
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Terrance Morrison contacts Program Committee for sorter’s contact information
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Tuesday, October 5
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Deadline to edit invited speaker information
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Wednesday, October 6
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Invitation letters sent to all invited speakers
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Tuesday, October 12
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Sorters Contact information for online sorting due to Terrance Morrison (apsmtgs-march@aps.org)
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Friday, October 22
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Abstract deadline-official deadline for Contributed and Invited abstracts and Deadline for Invited Speakers to RSVP via the web ink provided in their invitations
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Wednesday-Thursday,
November 3 & 4
Friday, November 19
Wednesday, December 1
Thursday-Friday, December 2 & December 3
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Sorters Meeting Phase I
Abstract Sorting begins with online training (Q&A)
Online sorting ends
March Meeting 2022 Registration Opens
Sorters Meeting Phase II (Program Chairs & Team Leaders only) • Assignment of orphans to sessions
• Assign dates/times to sorted sessions
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Friday, December 3
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Sorters & Program Committee begin contacting session Chairs
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Wednesday, December 8
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Scientific Program posted online for Committee Review
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Friday, December 17
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Confirmed Session Chairs due to APS
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Friday, December 17
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All program edits due from Program Committee to Terrance Morrison (apsmtgs-march@aps.org)
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Tuesday, December 21
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Author notices sent
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Wednesday, December 22
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Chair notices sent
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2022
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Deadlines
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Action Items
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Tuesday, January 4
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Early Registration deadline
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Friday, January 7
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Last Day for all author-requested changes other than withdrawals
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Friday, January 14
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Lunch with the Experts
experts and topics due to Ebony Adams (adams@aps.org)
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Friday, February 4
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Late Registration deadline (On-site fees after this date)
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Soliciting Sessions
We use Google Forms that people type in and submit for new and pre-identified FOCUS or INVITED sessions. The benefit of Google forms is that the spreadsheets can be created automatically.
Update and copy Google forms from last year into your own personal google account. In this way the form will be linked to you, and hence anyone who attempts to hit “reply” will generate an email to you and not to your predecessor. Copy the old forms into the new ones. (You may first need to get permission from whomever owns the old versions.) Then revise to update all dates, names, e-mails that they contain.
We also post online Google documents that submitters can download, edit offline till they get it the way they want it, then copy and paste into the Google Forms. Scan through these two documents and update all dates, names, e-mails that they contain. If you made other changes in the Google Forms, update these documents to be consistent.
Proposers should know there are no guaranteed registration fee waivers/reimbursements for invited speakers. After the deadline, contact all session proposers who made the deadline (up to you whether to give a grace period), and thank them (i.e. acknowledge submission). Communicate an expected time to decide.
MC suggested removing the wording about weighing the commitment of invited speakers as one of the criteria for accepting the Focus or Invited topics. Using this criteria disproportionately discouraged invited speakers with limited means. The “Nomination System” from the APS, the willingness of a particular invited speaker is not a problem at all, as we can nominate as many invited speakers as alternatives, whether confirmed or not. It is the “Topics” that drives the program.
MC also advises that the google sheet for the Focus sessions provides the name of 1 nominated invited speaker and several others as alternatives. The speakers do not have to commit to join the MM at this point.
MC also suggested adding a tab on the google sheet asking whether the organizers would like to assist with sorting, or to serve as “Lead Sorters”. While we encourage early career members to submit topics for Focus Sessions, MC strongly recommended the Lead Sorters should be established scientists whose reputation will not be easily injured if they were forced to make hard decisions on consolidating sessions, room assignment, invited speakers selections, etc.
E-mail sent to DBIO members in mid-May to solicit Session (send via Engage):
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The Division of Biological Physics needs your ideas and efforts to build our program for the 2022 March Meeting!
We have several ways for you to help:
- Submit a proposal for an Invited Session confirmation from invited speakers are not needed for the nomination system. This language should be removed for MM23)
- Submit a proposal for a Focus Session
- Volunteer to be co-organizer for a pre-identified Focus Session
Based on their success last year, we have identified 13 areas that we’d like to have Focus Sessions on: Evolutionary & Ecological Dynamics, Immune Sensing & Response, Macromolecular Phase Separation, Mechanics of Cells and Tissues, Biological Active Matter, Cytoskeleton, Proteins, Animal Behavior and Social Interactions, Robophysics, Genome Organization, Biomaterials, Biofilms, and Neural Systems.
If you are interested in organizing and defining a Focus Session in any of these areas, please use this expedited form.
If you wish to propose a new session (invited or focus), click the appropriate link above to be taken to the appropriate submission form.
Submissions are due by May 30, 2021. (this should be May 23rd 2022)
Email mscheung@uw.edu with questions/comments.
Thank you for supporting DBIO and contributing to the success of the APS
March Meeting!
Sincerely,
Margaret Cheung
Chair-Elect, DBIO Unit.
Below, please find the members of the APS DBIO Program Committee 2022. I thank them for their time serving on this committee. I look forward to an exciting MM program in 2022:
Margaret S Cheung (Chair, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Review of Modern Physics, U of Washington, U of Houston, Center for Theoretical Biological Physics,)
Serena Bradde(Physical Review E)
MOUMITA DAS(Rochester Institute of Technology)
Nancy Forde(Simon Fraser Univ)
Margaret Gardel(Univ of Chicago)
Taras Pogorelov (UIUC)
Omar A. Saleh(UCSB)
Joshua W Shaevitz(Princeton)
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Choosing Focus and Invited Sessions
The APS has established best practices, rules and policies to select Focus and Invited Sessions. Please see the Handbook. The program committee can establish our own rubrics for selecting the Topics for the Invited Sessions. The declined Invited proposals could become Focus Sessions (this is important). Since we used the “Nomination System” from the APS, we can nominate speakers for the Focus or the Invited Sessions in August. There is no need to rush to confirm the invited speakers in June. We should first manage the topics for the “Sorting Categories”(Focus and Standard Sessions) and “Invited Sessions”.
FOCUS SESSION SELECTION
1) We typically accept all reasonable FOCUS sessions. There is no limit on FOCUS sessions, though each must ultimately have enough abstracts to justify a session.
2) Check with DPOLY, GSOFT, and GSNP about potential overlaps in FOCUS sessions. This is important but we don’t have to cosponsor repetitive topics across units.
3) FOCUS sessions that are very close should be informed at this point and check if they would like to combine with others. Most declined the suggestions. It is OK at this point because the undersubscribed sessions will be combined with others at Phase 2 of the sorting.
4) Identify obvious gaps in Focus Sessions; Solicit organizers to fill those gaps. This is important.
5) Tell FOCUS proposers you’ve selected them so they should get to work spreading the word (technically the session is contingent on getting enough contributed abstracts).
6) The number of FOCUS Sessions did not have to be the same as the past year. The APS MM logistic team will decide on the room assignment for next year’s APS MM according to the past 5 years of data. If DBIO is growing, let it be.
INVITED SESSION SELECTION
1) Remember that you need to reserve one INVITED session for the Delbruck Prize session for the Debruck prize winner. if it is being awarded. The problem is the winner is being selected and cannot be notified until the Council approves in September. So, you have to leave it hanging for a long time - after the deadline for invited speakers. That is OK. The winner is asked who should talk at their session. (S)he and the program committee Chair organize the session. Again, the prize winner’s talk is deemed “nontechnical.”
2) The APS MM Chairperson’s Handbook also provides a few excellent rules of thumb. If some Focus Sessions from last year were popular (by having several of them), then such topics should be represented by the invited sessions. Since DBIO has 4-5 major subfields (molecular, subcellular, cellular, population, neural biophysics), it will make sense that each of these subfields will equitably get an invited session.
3) You will have more INVITED proposals than your quota. But each FOCUS session can ONLY have 1 invited talk. So you can make an unsuccessful INVITED proposer happy if you create a corresponding FOCUS and get at least some of the proposed invited talks as invited talks in the FOCUS session(s). Although you have not yet accepted or rejected any INVITED sessions, think about this possibility. Try to ensure that INVITED proposals you think won’t get selected have corresponding FOCUS session sorting categories for reconfiguration.
4) Confer with DPOLY, GSOFT, GSNP about invited sessions you have selected. Check for overlap. See if some topics could be co-sponsored. Sharing sponsorship may allow DBIO to have higher impact, but it may be that the Division wants to get more invited sessions that they lead. If they approach you about co-sponsoring a session, see if there is a session of ours they could co-sponsor. An INVITED session cosponsored by N units costs each of them 1/N against its quota. Double-check that this is still the case. Of course it adds another level of complexity since you want to saturate your bound, and now your cost won’t necessarily be an integer. MC in general did not favor co-sponsoring Focus or Invited Sessions because it complicated room assignment.
Invited Talks for New APS Fellows and Thesis Prize Winners:
Thesis prize winner(s) and New APS Fellows are invited to give INVITED talks in FOCUS or INVITED Sessions. Typically, it is easiest for it to be a FOCUS session. Find the chair of the Thesis prize and ask who the winner(s) will be. The APS did not consider these talks as Prized talks. So if the fellow has given an invited talk last year, she/he will not be eligible for another talk
- Program Chair is also Chief of Communication Officer
It is important for the Program Chair to keep track of open communications among the DBIO Program Committee, DBIO ExComm, the APS Logistics Team, and the focus session coorganizers. The APS logistics team sent emails only to the Unit Program Chair to coordinate the deadlines. It is the Program Chair who held the responsibility to deliver the scientific program for their unit at the MM (not the APS logistic team). MC shared the timelines and created FAQ google sheets with stakeholders.
Notes on invited speaker selections:
- APS will vet invited speakers (both kinds) and complain to you if (a) a speaker is ineligible (technical invited talk the previous year), or (b) a speaker has been asked to give two invited talks this year (typically in DBIO and some other unit, so you weren’t aware). You’ll have to resolve those conflicts in cooperation with any other unit involved.
- The selected invited speakers will be sent letters from APS directly in late October. Suddenly at this point speakers will start to say “well of course I won’t come unless you pay my registration.” Remind session organizers up front that the APS or DBIO won’t waive registration fees. The organizers are welcome to raise funds for their invited speakers.
- If session organizers report any cancellations, we can just select another invited speakers from the list of “alternatives” in the “Nomination System”.
Notes on Financial Incentives for Invited Speakers:
The APS DBIO did not offer financial incentives for the invited speakers in MM22.
DBIO will realign the travel fund for a wider group of members for MM23. MC nominated two invited speakers for the APS lectureship in early December. Roselind Allen received an APS Beller Lectureship..
Notes on Sorting Categories
Contact APS and request a listing of the previous year’s sorting categories with stats about how many abstracts each succeeded in attracting. There are the FOCUS sorting categories, followed by the regular DBIO sorting categories. In the FOCUS sessions, each may have several sponsors listed, but the primary “owner” is the first sponsor listed, so separate out the ones whose first sponsor is DBIO.
Update the sorting categories (both Regular sorting categories, and sorting categories specifically dedicated to FOCUS sessions). Your goal is to (a) discard moribund regular sorting categories; (b) add new regular sorting categories; (c) create a list of FOCUS sorting categories; (d) contact fellow program chairs asking them to cosponsor FOCUS sessions; (e) reply to similar requests from them. I chose not to assign any numbers to sorting categories because APS may renumber them anyway and that would be very confusing. Annotate all those that other units agreed to cosponsor.
MC trimmed down the sorting categories for 2022MM. APS shared the statistics on each category from the last MM. MC removed co-sponsored focus sessions with low attendance. Also, always order the focus sessions primarily sponsored by the DBIO first and those co-sponsored sessions last on the category.
Notes on Co-sponsoring with Other Units
It is common to cosponsor FOCUS sessions with other units: DSOFT, DFD, DCOMP, DMP, DCMP, DPOLY, GSNP, DFED. If an invited session is co-sponsored it ends up counting only 0.5 towards our quota. Because the abstract numbers affect the assignment of conference rooms, most Units were very cautious about co-sponsoring.
The “costs” are: (1) abstracts submitted to a cosponsored session may get the credit divided among the cosponsoring units; check with APS if this concerns you), (2) some extra headaches at sorting if other units claim a DBIO-led Sorting Category and move talks around. (3) room assignment. In MM22 we received a block of conference rooms for 5 or 6 concurrent sessions without sharing with other units. This brought more flexibility in assigning the scheduling Grid.
- Submitting Selection of Invited speakers into Planstone (MM22)
(1) Enter invited sessions and speaker info to Planstone. APS provided tutorials to access Planstone.
(2) Invited speakers for FOCUS Sessions will be entered as Invited Speaker Selections. You may choose to ask the FOCUS Session organizers to enter their invited speakers, to distribute the workload a bit more. Many people will already be in the system, and you will just select them after a simple search. In this case, some of their vital information will already be in ScholarOne from the initial export from our system, and you will not need to enter any additional information. For the ones that are not already included, then you will need to add a new person. To do this, you will need a name, email address, and affiliation. You will not need fax, phone, or anything else.
(3) Invited symposium speakers will be entered as part of the Invited Symposium Selections. Either you can enter these, or you can enlist the help of other DBIO folks to enter them. You need: Speaker name. Speaker email. Speaker affiliation. Talk title. And session chair. This is when you realize that various of these data are missing on the proposals you approved, so get on the organizers early (of course everyone is on vacation in August). There is also a required field called “Justification.” It’s irrelevant, so just enter an x.
(4) If there are date restrictions on an INVITED session, and there always will be some, enter them in the special info box for that session. Hopefully, you have kept a log of these as you became aware of them over the last several months.
- Sorting Sessions & Room Scheduling
In 2021, MC had 65 members from the co-organizers of the focus sessions for sorting in Phase 1 and 8 members as Lead Sorters in Phase 2. It worked well for sorting over 900 oral abstracts on google-sheets.
1) APS runs training sessions for sorting on zoom. Make sure to attend these.
2) Your sorters can only see and touch abstracts in their assigned sorting categories. After they “session” an abstract (create a session and put abstracts there), then you’ll be able to see it inside that session (if your sorter has correctly chosen DBIO as its “topic”). If they think something is inappropriately classified, they can hand it off to another category. The training explains how. This is a reason to not get granular on sorting assignments.
3) You can see every unassigned talk that has a DBIO sorting category. But other units will dump an abstract they don’t want into the Exchange Bin, with a comment proposing what unit they think should pick it up. This can be very useful to fill out underfull sessions, so scan the EB repeatedly during this process.
4) The other major headache: Incredibly, APS doesn’t seem to have any hard deadline for invited abstracts. This means that for every FOCUS you and your sorters must manually keep track of what abstracts are still missing, trust those speakers not to pull out, and allocate 36 minutes for each one. MC delegated Sorters to nag missing speakers during this process, in an attempt to minimize missing abstracts, but some of them will still wait forever. I also asked them to at least affirm to me that they did plan to speak, even if they were too busy to get an abstract in.
Sample instructions sent to sorters (second of two):
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Hello Friends
I would like to ask that you try to finish online sorting by XX, so that I can spend YY going over things and making adjustments. If you have already finished, or when you finish, please let me know that, so that I can start looking over things.
Please scan the Exchange Bin to see if there are any abstracts there that could fit one of your sessions.
Finally, may I ask that you doublecheck your work. Are invited focus session talks properly labeled as such (36 min vs 12 for oral contributed)? And so on.
Many thanks for your help.
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- Room Assignments for Sessions
(1)Rooms hold certain numbers of people. So estimate, based on numbers of submitted abstracts, which sessions need big rooms and which need smaller rooms. Your sorting team should have done this already and entered it in the info window of each session they created. Make sure you have done this if they haven’t.
(2) APS will tell you capacity of each room, so get a mix of small and big. Use the information on the number of abstracts submitted for the session (s) to decide on which rooms should be big or small. Few abstracts (1 session) should be a smaller room.
(3) Also at this time request a room reservation for the annual DBIO open business meeting. In 2019/20 the person to ask was Vinaya Sathyasheelappa sathyash@aps.org
(4) APS checks the session chairs or offers suggestions of other possible chairs, if the ones there are not appropriate or overlapping. Suggestions of postdocs to serve as chairs are welcome and good for the postdocs, but we don’t always know who those people are.
(5) Reserved rooms for Tall Hall (immediately following the DBIO business meeting on Tuesday) and refreshments for the Business Meeting.
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Other Issues
(1) Inform the Session chairs who have award winners/new fellows in their sessions (dissertation awards and travel awards) that the person is an award winner. Ask for it to be mentioned in the introduction of the person.
(2) Send a Follow Up Survey to Session Chairs
(3) Finally, compile some statistics about the meeting, e.g.: How many sessions? How many female invited speakers? Session organizers? Session chairs? You’ll want to present this at the excomm meeting in March.
(4) Make sure the business meeting room is big enough.
(5) Send email to chairs of March Meeting to follow up to ask about room capacity and needs for next year.
(6) Organize Networking Events and “Meet the Speaker” Tables.