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The Evolution Joint Meeting Committee is pleased to welcome two new Assistant Chief Meeting Organizers: Brian Hollis and Alex Wong. With Chief Meeting Organizer Howard Rundle, the new organizers will help plan and run the annual Evolution meeting, including producing the scientific program and interfacing with the society councils and the professional conference organizer. Thank you Dr. Hollis and Dr. Wong for your commitment!

Did you miss the Virtual Evolution meeting this summer? It’s not too late the view talks! You can now register for just $10 (USD) to view all the live and pre-recorded talks. Visit https://www.evolutionmeetings.org/registration.html to register. Once you have registered, sign in here, click on “Profile Home”, then “Evolution 2021 Virtual Platform.” All videos are available to view through the platform through December 2021. You can also watch the Presidential, IDEA Award, and Gould Prize plenary talks and Story Collider videos for free on the Evolution Meeting Youtube page.

Story Collider is returning for Virtual Evolution 2021! This event will take place Thursday, June 24 at 7:00 PM EDT and will feature three people sharing true, personal stories about science on the theme “Stories of 2020.” Continue reading to learn more about how to submit your story. Deadline: April 22, 2021.

Stories are powerful. Whether hilarious or heartbreaking, subversive or soothing, it matters who takes the stage and what stories are told. We want to hear yours!

On June 24, The Story Collider will host a very special virtual edition of our live show at Evolution 2021. We are searching for three people to share true, personal stories about science, on the theme "Stories of 2020." 2020 was the year (decade?) that just wouldn't end. We'd like to hear how the many events of 2020 (COVID, the national reckoning with racism, politics, wildfires, etc.) impacted your life and science.

If you’d like to pitch us, all you need at this point is the seed of an idea for your story. It can be about almost anything: an important experiment, a rough day in the field, misadventure, love, loss, or more, but it must be about you. Our format does not include slides or props. It’s not the place for lectures. It’s about lived experiences. If you’re selected for the show, experienced Story Collider producers will work with you for several weeks in advance to help you prepare. Send us your pitch here: https://airtable.com/shrhVNgUxa8gCMdS3 The deadline for pitches has been extended to April 30, 2021. If you are curious or would like some inspiration, read more at https://www.storycollider.org/submissions or browse The Story Collider podcast archive at https://www.storycollider.org/podcasts.

Registration is now open for the Virtual Evolution 2021 conference on June 21-25! Talk submissions are open until April 30 or until all slots are filled. All talks must be recorded by June 1.

Talks and Events

Scheduled events will run from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Eastern time. See the Schedule Overview for more details.

Plenaries: Each day will be highlighted by a live-streamed plenary. On Friday, the 25th, we will live stream award symposia and talks. All live events will be available to view afterwards with English, Spanish, or no captions.

Faux-Live Talks: Pre-recorded, synchronous talks. These 10-minute talks will be grouped into sessions with live discussion sessions after each group. Talks will also be available to view afterwards. All talks submitted before the cap is reached will be accepted (up to ~1000). These talks can be given in English or Spanish, and can be viewed with English, Spanish, or no captions.

On-Demand Talks: Pre-recorded talks, 6 minutes each. These talks will be available to view any time, much like browsing a set of posters. All talks submitted before the cap is reached will be accepted (up to ~800). These talks can be given in English or Spanish, and viewed with English, Spanish, or no captions. 

Workshops: We are offering many of our familiar workshops, as well as some new ones. Topics include science communication, writing an NSF proposal, finding a postdoc, language barriers in science, public policy, and more! See the meeting website for more details.

Networking Opportunities: This meeting will offer many opportunities to connect with your colleagues. There will be open networking “lounges”, post-talk discussion sessions, postdoc and grad student-faculty networking “lunches”, and a variety of socials, including an international mixer for members outside the US, the John Edmonstone Coffee Social for BIPOC Scientists and Allies, the LGBTQ+ and Allies Super-Awesome Trivia Treasure Hunt, a PUI mixer, a mixer for biologists with disabilities/chronic illness/Deaf biologists and allies, and a Latinxs in evolution mixer. Story Collider is also back by popular demand. See the meeting website for more details.

Important Dates

April 15: Deadline for the SSE Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation
April 30: Deadline for faux-live and on-demand talk submissions (or earlier if capacity is reached)
June 1: Deadline for uploading recorded talks (or recording them using the meeting app)

SSE Member Registration Rates

Undergraduate/Graduate Student: $10 USD
Postdoc: $50 USD
Faculty/Professional: $125 USD

Every Evolution conference (including this one) is budgeted to break even. What does my registration pay for?

Global Participation Program

We are pleased to offer free meeting registration for up to 200 society members from 139 countries and territories around the world. All SSE members who joined through the Global Membership Assistance Program are eligible! Learn more here.

Bilingual Mentor Program

For Evolution 2021, we will pair non-native English speakers with bilingual mentors. Mentors and mentees will meet before the conference to provide advice, work on presentations, and aid in translation. Indicate interest in mentoring or receiving mentorship during registration. Más información está disponible aquí.

Undergraduate Mentor Program

Graduate students and postdocs are encouraged to sign up to be a mentor for an undergraduate student through the virtual Undergraduate Day program. This program is an impactful but relatively low time-commitment opportunity to help undergrads feel at home in our Evolution community. Sign up during registration!

Safe Evolution

The Council of Evolution Societies (ASN, SSE, and SSB) are committed to promoting a safe, inclusive, and professional environment at Virtual Evolution 2021 through Safe Evolution. This program was designed to establish standards of appropriate behaviors, to address work-climate related concerns, and to offer support to members who may feel harassed, threatened or unsafe in any way when participating in joint meeting programs. If we all engage, we can make the Evolution meetings a professional and meaningful experience for everyone. Learn more on the Safe Evolution page.

Evolution 2021 will be VIRTUAL! The councils of SSB, ASN, and SSE have made the decision to cancel the in-person 2021 Evolution meeting that had been scheduled to be held in Albuquerque, NM. Our highest priorities are the health and well-being of our communities, as well as those of the workers who would help run our meeting and the communities we would be visiting. While we are hopeful that the current pandemic will abate by next summer, our decision had to be made now. 

The societies are discussing what form the virtual 2021 meeting will take. A survey to gauge interest and opinions can be found here: https://bit.ly/Evolution2021Survey. We encourage you to give us your opinion on the format of the virtual meeting, so that we can prepare the best meeting possible for our members. We especially hope those who face challenges attending in-person Evolution meetings will participate. We invite you to complete the survey before Wednesday, December 16th.

This summer, the graduate student councils of SSE, the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) organized the Evolution Community Resources for Early Career Researchers (ECR^2) series of virtual events. Many events were recorded, and videos are now available on the ECR^2 YouTube channel. We especially recommend the outstanding plenary talk by Dr. Joseph Graves on African Americans in evolutionary science. 

All videos include edited captions available by selecting the CC button on each YouTube video. See the full list of events on the ECR^2 website, and watch all the videos on the ECR^2 YouTube channel.

African Americans in Evolutionary Science: Where We Have Been and What's Next

This Wednesday at 12:00 PM Eastern, Dr. Joseph L. Graves of the Evolution Institute and Associate Dean of Research and Professor at NC Agricultural and Technical State University will present a timely follow-up to his important paper on the racial diversity crisis in EEB and the experience of Black people in EEB fields. The original 2019 paper in Evol. Ed. Outreach will provide the audience with some background, and he also recommends his recent commentary in "The Scientist" with Dr. Erich Jarvis.

This event is part of the Evolution Community Resources for Early Career Researchers (ECR^2) series of virtual events. If you registered to participate in this event, you will receive a link to the Zoom meeting via email on Tuesday. This event will also be recorded and available on the ECR^2 YouTube page here. Watch the live stream here.

Evolution Community Resources for Early Career Researchers (ECR^2) is a series of online events hosted by the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB). This series, taking place in July and August 2020, is aimed at re-creating some of the networking and professional development opportunities that are such a valuable part of our in-person Evolution meetings. 

Registration closes July 10, so reserve your "seat" now!

In response to many requests via social media, the Evolution Meeting organizers are taking pre-orders for shirts for Evolution 2020, "The Meeting That Never Happened." Shirts are available in two styles and will be sold until April 23. All profits will go to the meeting account shared by SSE, ASN, and SSB. Get yours today!

The annual meeting is run on a break-even basis whereby registration fees and sponsorship income cover the expenses associated with the conference. Even in the best-case scenario, there will be financial consequences to the societies of cancelling the 2020 meeting. If you would like to make a donation to help defray cancellation costs for the three societies, you can now do so through SSE. All funds will go to the conference accounts. 

The councils of SSB, ASN, and SSE have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 Evolution meeting in Cleveland. Our highest priority is the health and well-being of our communities. Full refunds will be issued to all attendees and sponsors who have registered thus far. We are continuing to plan for Evolution 2021 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Please pay attention to best practices during these stressful times, and stay healthy.

An important note from our meeting organizers:

At this point, the Evolution meeting is going ahead as planned. Registration remains open and we note that attendees can cancel their meeting registration for a full refund (less a nominal $10 fee) up to June 1. We are monitoring the situation as the health and safety of our attendees remains our top priority, and while we will do our best to avoid it, we will cancel if deemed appropriate. We are currently assessing our agreements with the conference center and other parties and will be consulting with the governing councils of SSE, ASN, and SSB. We hope to establish a more firm timetable for decisions in the next 10 days or so. Updates will be posted on the meeting website as soon as they are available.

The American Society of Naturalists, Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists are looking for Evo Allies for the 2020 Evolution Meeting in Cleveland. Evo Allies are vetted and trained attendees who serve the community as visible colleagues who are available to offer support to Evolution Meeting participants who are targets of, or who witness, inappropriate behavior. Applications are due Monday, March 23. Continue reading for more information.

Join us for an outstanding conference in one of the coolest cities in N. America - Cleveland Rocks! Registration and talk/poster submission are now open! Register first and then you will be able to submit a presentation. We anticipate 1700-2000 attendees, 1,000+ talks, and 400+ posters. Put your talk in the spotlight by submitting to a Spotlight Session. There will be a variety of symposia, plenaries, spotlight and contributed talk sessions, and evening poster sessions/mixers. On Friday before, and throughout  the conference, there are a variety of workshops, special events, and networking opportunities. Your registration includes admission to all of this, as well as morning and afternoon coffee breaks (with snacks), the Friday evening opening reception and Gould lecture, and three evening poster receptions/mixers. This year our Tuesday evening Super Social is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Evol2020 strives for Inclusiveness and diversity and we are offering diverse social programs as well as Free Childcare, Science Knows No Borders, and Sustainability programs. Look around on the meeting website for more information including hotel accommodations and dorm housing. Share your plans for the meeting on social media using #Evol2020!

The 2019 transparency report from the ASN/SSE/SSB Evolution Meetings Code of Conduct Committee is now available. Each year, the Code of Conduct Committee will release a transparency report summarizing incidents, consequences, and related changes. The Code of Conduct has a strong emphasis on confidentiality; reports have been aggregated to avoid inadvertently linking reporters or respondents to incidents or any sanctions. The goal of this transparency report is to provide the community with a sense of how the Code of Conduct functions so they can build trust in the process, if such trust is warranted, and recommend improvements. Read the full report here. Learn more about the Safe Evolution program here.

Miss a talk at Evolution 2019? Check out the more than 350 talks from Evolution 2019 that have been uploaded to the meeting YouTube channel.

This month on the blog, read recaps of the ASN Symposium on science communication, the SSE Diverse Careers workshop, and the SSB Spotlight Session on phylogenomic methods. Stay tuned for more recaps later this month!

Beginning at Evolution 2019 in Providence, our meetings will include a group of vetted and trained attendees who will serve the community as Evo Allies. The role of an Evo Ally is to serve as a visible colleague who is available to offer support to Evolution Meeting participants who are targets of, or who witness, inappropriate behavior. The Evo Allies will be trained by our professional safety officer, Dr. Sherry Marts. Evo Allies do not participate in any aspect of investigating reports or sanctioning. Evo Allies commit to creating safe spaces at the meeting by serving as active bystanders.

This year’s Evo Allies are: Dean Adams, Cecile Ane, Rayna Bell, Dan Bolnick, Butch Brodie, Jeremy Brown, Kelsey Byers, Daren Card, Nancy Chen, Sam Church, Nancy Emery, Anahi Espindola, Gabby Guilhon, Tracy Heath, Emily Josephs, Laura Lagomarsino, Chris Moore, Corrie Moreau, Susan Perkins, Samantha Price, Leslie Rissler, Sharon Strauss, Josef Uyeda, Jodie Wiggins, and Melissa Wilson. Look for their Evo Ally badges at the meeting. Read more about Safe Evolution here.

The SSE Community Blog is looking for writers to report on the Evolution 2019 meeting in Providence, RI, USA. If you’re interested in informal scientific writing and reaching out to your colleagues who couldn’t make it to the meeting (and even those who were there and couldn’t be everywhere at once), please consider signing up! If you’d like to commit to writing a post, please contact blog editor Sasha Mushegian at blog@evolutionsociety.org and mention which conference events you plan to cover. Continue reading to learn more about what we’re looking.

If you are attending Evolution 2019 and would like to present a poster, you must submit your title and abstract by 10 PM Eastern time tonight. After logging in to the registration portal, click "Profile Home" to access the poster submission page. 

Beginning at Evolution 2019 in Providence, our meetings will include a group of vetted and trained attendees who will serve the community as Evo Allies. The role of an Evo Ally is to serve as a visible colleague who is available to offer support to Evolution Meeting participants who are targets of, or who witness, inappropriate behavior. The societies will sponsor training by our Safe Evolution officer (Dr. Sherry Marts) prior to the start of the meeting, and they will be designated with a special badge.

Evo Allies are there to listen, to help targets or witnesses deal with what has happened and to inform them of their options. The role of Evo Allies is to support individuals who have experienced or witnessed inappropriate behavior in making their own decision about whether or not to report it. Evo Allies do not participate in any aspect of investigating reports or sanctioning. Evo Allies also commit to creating safe spaces at the meeting by serving as active bystanders.

We currently have 26 Evo Allies from ASN, SSB and SSE who are in the process of vetting and training.

For more information about Safe Evolution, please check out the website: https://www.evolutionmeetings.org/safe-evolution.html

The societies sponsoring the 2017 Evolution meeting in Portland and the 2018 Evolution Congress in Montpellier required all conference participants to agree to a meeting Code of Conduct. We have recently released a transparency report that serves to inform attendees and society members about reported incidents, general outcomes of those reports, and steps taken by the societies to further prevent inappropriate behavior at our meetings. You can read the full report here. Visit the Safe Evolution page to learn more about the tri-societies’ commitment to promoting a safe, inclusive, and professional work environment at the joint Evolution Meetings.

Reminder: Early registration for Evolution 2019 ends tonight! Register before 10:00 PM tonight, April 15, to receive the early-bird rate and apply for travel awards, apply to volunteer, or apply or the Hamilton Award symposium. Start your registration here: https://www.evolutionmeetings.org/registration.html

The SSE Council invites proposals for two SSE-sponsored symposia to be held at the 2020 Evolution meeting in Cleveland, OH, USA on June 19-23, 2020. SSE Council considers the novelty of the topic and likely interest among its members when selecting symposia to sponsor. Sub-fields or taxonomic groups that have been underrepresented in past symposia will be considered preferentially. Previous sponsored symposia are listed on the SSE webpage along with detailed instructions for preparing proposals.

SSE Council seriously considers the diversity of participants as a criterion for symposium funding. Symposium organizers are expected to take into account gender, seniority, nationality, and other axes of diversity traditionally underrepresented in Society symposia, and to describe their efforts in the proposal.

To be assured of full consideration, proposals must be received by midnight Eastern Standard Time on June 1, 2019. Read more here.

SSE is offering 50 travel stipends, $500 each, for graduate students and postdocs to attend the meeting. Recipients must present a talk or poster at the meeting. Application is part of meeting registration. Researchers at various careers stages working in low-GDP countries may be eligible for the SSE International Travel Stipend, which may cover travel and lodging expenses. Each meeting attendee may only receive one society-sponsored travel award. Learn more here.