Antony Gee, PhD
I thought it timely to share with you some of the recent activities of the SRS and a few things to keep an eye on in the coming weeks and months.
It has been about a year since our successful meeting in Beijing - and in a years’ time we will be holding our 24th ISRS meeting in Nantes, France.
Sandrine Huclier and the local organising committee have been working tirelessly together with the SRS programme committee, board and exec to put together an exciting programme for the symposium. The prime objective of our biennial meeting is to provide top class science, education and networking for our members and associates. To identify what you like about our meetings and what could make future meetings even better, we solicited feedback from many of you (in person or via a post-SRS meeting survey) and have incorporated many of your ideas for our 2021 Nantes symposium.
To further understand and, therefore, serve our members, we have created a brief demographic survey. The survey should take only 5 minutes to complete.
To access the survey, you must be a member or a member within the last two years. Also, you will have to login to your SRS member profile here: https://www.xcdsystem.com/srsweb/member. Then select the “SRS Demographic Survey” button.
We have spent some time building up a portfolio of activities that adds value to SRS membership, irrespective of the biennial SRS cycle. For example, we now have established the CAFACHEM summer school (organic and halogen radiochemistry summer school) which complements the TERRACHEM meeting (radiometal chemistry) as activities that are now to be held in the ‘in between’ meeting years.
Despite negative affect the coronavirus is having on our lives and economies, we still continue with organizing CAFACHEM summer school as it is scheduled from August 25-28. Nevertheless, we keep reviewing the UK and global guidance and restrictions to provide updates accordingly. Please note that the abstract submission deadline is this Friday, May 1. For more information, browse https://www.srsweb.org/cafachem2020-abstracts.
Other examples of added value for members is the formation of the SRS Think Tank (SRS-TT), which is a forum for early career researchers. It is really encouraging to see the recent SRS-TT members consolidate their careers with new opportunities and networking. Some of these members have now moved on to new roles, in some cases started their own laboratories – a great testament to the emerging talent in our field. Because of this, we are now seeking new members to join SRS-TT. If you are interested or want to know more please send an email to thinktank@srsweb.org.
Putting our current COVID crisis aside, our field still faces many challenges. One of these is the global lack of training and education for radiopharmaceutical professionals. An SRS-led international panel chaired by Peter Scott will be publishing a white paper setting out the case for increased funding in this area, to enable us to bring this issue to the attention of funders and decisionmakers in documented form.
There are more good things emerging from the SRS for me to tell you about, but I will leave some of those for my next SRS update. In the meantime keep safe and sane.
Cheers,
Tony Gee, PhD
SRS President