ASM Annual General Meeting - SIG Update

Thank you to everyone who attended and participated at the SIG's first Annual General Meeting (AGM) that was run at this years Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) conference in Brisbane. We had a great turn out for our first AGM with over 20 people participating in the SIG meeting. Thank you to everyone who attended and for taking the time to build the SIG. Please find below our AGM agenda and meeting notes.




Bacteriophage Biology & Therapeutics SIG Annual General Meeting, July 2018. (photo credit to Lucy Furfaro)

Agenda

1. Update on SIG activities
After the AGM we now have a total of 45 SIG members, including academics, post-docs, PhDs, clinicians, industry partners and a new cohort of members from New Zealand. I have updated the members page to reflect the new membership. In an attempt to keep this list manageable I have tried to limit this list to lab heads, clinicians and industry groups. If you would like anything changed or updated on this page please let me know.

• This year the SIG organised a Bacteriophage session as part of the MMM2018 meeting in Sydney. 
• We initiated this blog site as a way to keep members updated about SIG activities. Next blog post will be co-authored by Carola Venturini & Lucy Furfaro on the recent Viruses of Microbes conference in Poland.

2. Formal election of SIG convenor and state reps
As part of our AGM we formally elected our interim convenor and state reps to serve a two year term as part of the SIG committee. We will elect a new committee at the 2020 ASM meeting. The state reps and convenor are:

Convenor & VIC Rep: Jeremy J. Barr
QLD Rep: Karen Wyenberg
NSW Rep: Carola Venturini
SA Rep: Peter Speck
WA Rep: Matthew Payne

3. Open floor for general comments and suggestions from members
There were a lot of great comments and suggestions for the SIG, I have put these together here for everyone to review. If there is a particular item you would like to action or be involved in, please let one of the committee members know.

Main topic points

• Terms of Reference for the SIG will be drafted this year by the committee as part of our commitment to ASM. This document will attempt to capture the goals for the SIG, our phage network, strategy for growth and promotion of phage research, and our action plan for the next two years.
• Phage conference/seminar sessions: SIG can coordinate a range of phage sessions at ASM events, JAMS, and other specialist conferences. We could also look at recorded webinars, podcasts, blog series to promote phage biology. A phage special topic for the ASM Journal was also suggested. We will promote these sessions and opportunities through our blog site and other SIG communication channels.
• Centre of Excellence or CRC: A number of members suggested that a longer term goal of the SIG should be to establish a Centre of Excellence or CRC that involves phage biology. A number of SIG members have experience in these bids (Phil Hugenholtz, Peter Speck, Jon Iredell). One potential is an upcoming Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) CRC bid being led by UQ. This bid has been pushed back a year and an expression of interest will be submitted by June 2019. We will discuss these opportunities further with the committee and other members and will update about relevant opportunities as they arise.
• Social Media: The SIG should look to establish social media avenues to promote our members, science and phage research. We will discuss a Facebook site and Twitter account for the SIG. If anyone is interested in maintaining these please let the committee know.

Member comments

• Peter Speck: Encouraged everyone to log onto their NHMRC and ARC profiles and to list 'bacteriophages' as an interest. This will be incredibly important for grant review processes.
• Dianne Ouwerkerk: SIG should also look to broaden network, include rumen microbiology and veterinary practitioners.
• General comment: From a clinical point of view, microbiology of phage clinical studies are crucial for the field. There is a lack of clinical trials documenting phage efficacy and addressing this will require a joint effort between clinicians and phage researchers.
• General comment: SIG site to include a job board to list open positions or to promote graduating students and researchers looking for their next positions.

Upcoming SIG relevant meetings

• Australian Microbial Ecology (AusME), 2019 - Perth, 11th-13th Feb
• Synthetic Biology Australia 2019 - Brisbane, September
• Australian Virology Society (AVS) 2019 – Queenstown, 1st week of December
• Molecular Microbiology Meeting (MMM) 2020 - Sydney, April

Any comments or suggestions please let me know,

Sincerely,

Jeremy