Dear colleagues, Dear ISBC members
May I wish you a happy new year and I hope that 2019 brings you and your entire family, happiness and success.
The ISBC committee after the Nantes congress proposed that I succeed Vadim Viviani, whom I thank after two years of presidency.
I want to sincerely thank the committee for its confidence.
My term will have three goals that the committee asked me to conduct.
- Boost our ISBC society by stimulating membership. Our society must be stronger to be more visible. We are potentially 400-500 members around the world and currently too few of us are members of the ISBC. This is my first goal. I wish to relieve the volunteers by transferring this charge to a professional structure that will manage the memberships and inform you. As discussed at ISBC 2018, topic groups can be formed to form a network and energize the ISBC. The goal is to offer all members a real offer and at least a network of addresses for our students.
- Bring ISBC closer to ISLS (International Symposium on Luminescence Spectrometry). The committee is aware that two are stronger. Many of you are participating in the ISLS and it is now strategic to at least organize a congress together. 88% are in favor (July 2018 survey). Loic Blum and Aldo Roda have each opened the track necessary for our two structures to come closer together. Willy Baeyens (ISLS founder) and Philippe Giamarchi (Chair ISLS 2018) are in favor. The future congress will undoubtedly be a mixed ISBC / ISLS conference ensuring a greater audience and opening on more topics.
- Help the organizers and promote the future ISBC 2020 and think about the ISBC 2022 congress! Currently two proposals are emerging.
Our ISBC society has the function of promoting our themes and without you this society does not exist. I renew my thanks to all the members of the committee, volunteers who take care of their daily management research (Aldo Roda, Elisa Michelini, Steve Haddock) and hope that you will join a lot.
Thank you all and long live ISBC 2020
Pr Gerald Thouand
