2018 IUIS Council Meeting Review

18.06.2018

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The 67th Council meeting of IUIS was held in Cancun on May 14, 2018. The ExCo reports summarised achievement in our main goals for the previous year: transparency in finances, refinement of committee structure, focus on gender balance, and progress with our relationship with Frontiers in Immunology. It was particularly pleasing to be able to host the sub-committee chairs of the Nomenclature and QAS committees at a satellite meeting ahead of the Council meeting to facilitate their goals under new chairpeople.

 

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Collectively, Council approved:

1. To fund a pilot for new bookkeeping software to be managed by K.I.T. If successful, this software will be rolled out for all committees, dramatically reducing time and energy by committee members in all financial areas
2. The Committee Guidelines – these provide all information necessary to run an IUIS committee, including terms for members and expectations from Council. These guidelines will be especially useful for new chairs in the future
3. A memorandum of understanding with IUPHAR – this will serve as a new collaboration linking immunology and pharmacology
4. General guidelines for hosting IUIS 2025 – these include timelines for the current year
5. Four projects using one-off funds in the budget for 2018 – these include support to expand the activities of the EDU committee, the GEC committee (a pilot Travel for Techniques award), the VIC committee (creation of a MHC database), and the FAIS Legacy Project (to increase African immunology PhD students numbers in the long term)

A proposal to create new membership categories was not approved, pending further information and improvement,  and this will be circulated shortly.

 

In addition to formal progress, much discussion focussed on the IUIS website rebuild (a call for proposals will be circulated soon) and the possibility of sponsoring outreach into schools. The goals for the year ahead are to successfully promote and manage the IUIS 2019 meeting in Beijing and to improve communication between ExCo, committees, council and members.

 

 

Roslyn Kemp
IUIS Secretary-General