It is a tremendous honor and privilege to serve as your new president, and I look forward to working with all of you in these rapidly evolving times. My overall goal is simple: do what is best for our society. I am the first basic scientist in this position in quite some time, so I approach this unique opportunity with a different perspective.
We now have a new executive director at our home office in Zurich, Switzerland. Anneke Hibbel, PhD, who started on January 1, 2024, has already made a significant impact on our society, contributing her scientific background and business acumen to help facilitate our strategic plans. I am excited to work with Dr. Hibbel and the entire ICRS office staff. Stephen Seiler, who has been instrumental in our growth, has transitioned to focusing on optimizing the selection of getting us the best meeting venues for our members at the best value. He has also been instrumental in mentoring Anneke in all things ICRS, and I thank him for his graciousness in this regard. I would also like to thank our previous presidents, who have served as great role models. Elizaveta Kon is a powerhouse of energy which she devoted to our society and Tom Minas who shepherded us through the dark times of the Covid pandemic successfully. I am also indebted to our many committee chairs and their members who are incredibly active and who consistently contribute to our financial and academic growth.
Several of my goals include increasing our membership, especially more basic scientists and engineers, increased opportunities devoted to our members in underrepresented regions, improving our financial health along with growing our foundations endowment, and attention to DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion]. While I support partnerships with other organizations as it is both collaborative and academically important, we must be cognizant of our societies collective brain trust and intellectual academic property which is enormous. Thus, we need to strategize ways to preserve it to set our society apart from others which have more recently expanded into topics which overlap with our core interests and dilute our members efforts.
I am excited to share that we will be holding a strategic planning meeting later this year and we will be addressing all of the above issues in earnest. Additionally, we will be inviting several young members to attend and learn about the challenges we, the society at large, face as they will be the future leaders of our society.
As your president I plan to have an open-door policy and will always welcome any comments or recommendations you have that will benefit our membership and the collective goals of our society.
Thank you!
Daniel A. Grande
