Ken O’Halloran
Meetings Secretary, The Physiological Society

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.105.21

At the time of writing, the autumn meeting of The Society’s Meetings Committee is fast approaching. It reminds me that I am mid-way through my four year tenure as Meetings Secretary. How time flies. Opportunity to reflect briefly on the year that’s been, and more exciting than that, consider where The Society’s meetings roadshow is next headed. World class topic meetings in Nottingham (April 2016) and Warwick (August 2016) and focussed H³ meetings at Hodgkin Huxley House in London and at Oxford University throughout the year, complemented Physiology 2016, our collaboration with the American Physiological Society in late July, when Dublin played host to our annual meeting. Physiology 2016 set new benchmarks of grand scale success. More than 1,100 scientists from 69 countries – novices to Nobel laureates – enjoyed the four day fiesta of physiology, packed with plenary and keynote lectures, symposia and workshops, and more than 700 poster communications, celebrating the logic of life at a truly international affair. The rich portfolio on offer included sessions focussed on education and outreach, ethics, research careers, and publication. What a party; even before the local fare was sampled!

How do we follow that? Plans afoot for 2017 and beyond reveal continued ambition to celebrate physiology on the international stage. Our commitment in this vein dovetails with other activities within The Society, which reflect an increasingly outward-looking collaborative approach to the promotion of physiology, home and away. Council ratified the Meetings Committee recommendation that The Society should forego the annual meeting in 2017, in full and enthusiastic support of the IUPS Congress in Rio de Janeiro. Beyond financial support for symposia and Society prize lectures, and enhanced travel funds for members to facilitate attendance at the meeting, the gesture was warmly received internationally, and especially by the IUPS Council and the Brazilian Physiological Society, recognising the significance of the decision.

The change affords unique opportunity closer to home to develop an enhanced programme of activities in 2017, with 3 topic meetings and 7 H³ focussed symposia in the offing. In April, we will embed the Neurobiology of Stress topic meeting within the British Neuroscience Association festival in Birmingham. Summer will see Mitochondria: Form & Function, with discussions at an advanced stage with sister societies for the topic meeting to function as a collaborative inter- and cross-disciplinary event. Meetings Committee is also keen to progress with a third topic meeting, the Future of Physiology, a cross-themed event centred on early career physiologists celebrating the broad reaches of the discipline, which should see a return to an abundance of the much revered traditional open communication sessions (without voting!), a move informed by feedback from the wider membership.

If that’s not enough to whet appetites, we can peek ahead to the menu on offer in 2018. Two confirmed highlights are deep in the planning stage: Sleep & Chronophysiology will be one of two topic meetings, and Council has approved Europhysiology 2018, the inaugural meeting in London of a tripartite collaboration with the German Physiological Society and Scandinavian Physiological Society, that will see our annual meeting head to mainland Europe in 2020 and 2022.

The portfolio of collaborative events is a measure of the good health that physiology enjoys in the 21st century. The Society’s commitment to the delivery of its charitable objects is assured. Your continued support of our activities and participation at meetings is much sought after and valued. Our ambition is to provide a platform for physiology and physiologists to shine. It is high time to return physiology to the lexicon of the biomedical community and to conversations in the corridors of our institutions. We do so with a strong sense of the proud and rich tradition of the past, and with a confident and optimistic understanding of our place and purpose into the future. Shine on!