We were delighted to see so many of our members at the 1995 meeting in Boston. We estimate that more than 650 people attended. Many thanks go to Ron Niece, Nadine Ritter, the rest of the organizing committee, and all the speakers and participants for a superb job. For those of you who could not attend, this issue of ABRF News provides a report on the activities and summarizes some of the workshops; the remaining workshops will be summarized in the December newsletter. A summary of the ABRF Symposium on Approaches to Protein Characterization that was held in Davos, Switzerland is also included.
The 1996 meeting, ABRF '96: Biomolecular Techniques, will be three full days of workshops, plenary sessions, tutorials, and presentation of study results by each of our Research Committees. A number of companies have already indicated interest in exhibiting and in presenting evening workshops focused on their instrumentation. The call for abstracts will be mailed soon along with a preliminary program. We hope you will plan now to attend this meeting, March 30 to April 2, 1996 in San Francisco.
We are fortunate to have received strong support from our Corporate Sponsors, both for our general activities and for our meetings. Several companies have already agreed to become corporate meeting sponsors for ABRF '96. We thank them all for their generous contributions, which enable the ABRF to pursue a broad range of activities from collaborative research programs to presenting symposia and now a full three-day meeting. We are especially grateful to the sponsors of the ABRF award for outstanding contributions to biomolecular technology.
At the Boston meeting, some discussion began concerning service on ABRF Research Committees by members of the ABRF who are employed by corporations that sell instrumentation and reagents to biomolecular resource facilities. Since the meeting this issue has received considerable attention by the Executive Board with thoughtful input by many members via our electronic mailing list. The Executive Board is committed to develop a comprehensive, long-term policy that addresses issues of conflict of interest, appearance of bias, and equitable treatment of all. In the meantime, the Board has adopted an interim policy, which is detailed on page 2. We encourage our members to consider the issues carefully and share your thoughts with us.
This is a time of transition for many of our committees. We welcome our new committee members and thank the continuing and departing committee members for their efforts. The research produced by these committees is an outstanding and unique contribution of ABRF.
Elizabeth Fowler
Return to the The ABRF Home Page