ICIS Behind the Scenes
Sarah Gaffen, President, ICIS 2023-25
One often hears the phrase, ‘it takes a village’, which is certainly the case when it comes to running an organization as complex as the Cytokine Society. To start with, we have a governing Council composed of the President, President-Elect, Secretary, Treasurer and Councilors, who oversee all of the activities of the ICIS.
Additionally, we have multiple standing committees that do extensive work to make our organization tick. For example, the Meetings Committee, chaired by the inimitable and peripatetic Brendan Jenkins (University of Adelaide), decides the locations for ICIS meetings years in advance, visiting sites and coordinating with local organizers to make sure the locations and the programs live up to our high standards and expectations.
The Awards committee vets the applicants for our many awards, a labor of love. which range from awards for accomplished senior scientists (The ICIS-Pfizer Award, ICIS-BioLegend William E. Paul Awards & ICIS-Luminex Mid- Career Award), to Young Investigator Awards (Regeneron, Christina Fleischmann, Sidney & Joan Pestka, and Amanda Proudfoot Tribute Award, as well as trainee awards for students and postdocs and awards for Service (ICIS-Howard Young Distinguished Service, ICIS Mentorship and ICIS Honorary Lifetime Membership Award). This committee is currently headed by Judith Allen (University of Manchester) and Kate Fitzgerald (University of Massachusetts).
The Nominating Committee, chaired by Claudia Nold (Hudson Institute, Australia), identifies individuals within our membership to run for office (though self-nomination is also an option).
At the Cytokine Society we place high value on our early career investigators, and the Early Career Research committee develops activities and events at our annual meetings. The ECR committee is led by Adriana Forero (The Ohio State University) and Juan Mendoza (University of Chicago).
These and other important committees are described on our web site. Many of the above dedicated individuals have participated with their ‘sweat equity’ for years, even decades. We extend a heartfelt thanks to all of them. We are always on the lookout for people who want to be engaged, whether from academia or industry, so feel free to reach out with a description of how you might want to be involved, along with a CV or biosketch to EMAIL this information to our professional staff at Admin@cytokinesociety.org.
