Sue Wray
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.109.11

Since 1889, the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) has championed physiology without borders and worked to remove political barriers from physiologists interacting and attending meetings. However, IUPS is about more than attending (or not) an international meeting every four years.

As the recently elected First Vice-President of IUPS, I have been learning more about what else IUPS does. It runs workshops, holds regional meetings, and exchanges of scientific equipment and advice, and provides mentoring. It has a council with an executive committee, a board of The General Assembly which contributes additional participation and The General Assembly, which meets every four years at the quadrennial IUPS meetings, and is the deliberative body of the Union.

I also learned that ‘there is no money’. The new Council’s plan includes increasing the financial base of IUPS, from which increases in its activities can flow. IUPS co-owns the publication Physiology with the American Physiological Society. Establishing a new journal, The Physiome, should also contribute to financial security.

Particularly important is that IUPS helps to better communicate the importance of physiology as a subject, and to engage and communicate more efficiently with not just its member societies in 80 or so countries, but also with the members in those societies. This is my reason for writing this piece. I want to know what you like about IUPS, what you think it could do better, what its role should be and what would make you want to attend its next meetings (Beijing 2021 and Munich 2025)?

For me, IUPS congresses have always been something to look forward to. They are not only a great opportunity to talk science, but also to meet other physiologists from across the globe. It is the only meeting I go to where I know I will meet face to face with colleagues from Africa and South America, for example. It also goes some way to decreasing the vast differences in the opportunities to undertake research and teaching in physiology across the world. Collaborations and exchanges can be started, offers of mentoring and support given and differences made. The IUPS team will be building on Denis Noble’s legacy and working to ‘return physiology to centre stage’, as it becomes clearer that despite the mountains of molecular data, only when we appreciate their functional importance, i.e. physiology, will humankind benefit. What’s not to like?

Learn more at www.iups.org