Greetings Members! Thanks to everyone who has submitted abstracts for this year’s 62nd Annual Conference in Nashville, Tennessee October 7-10, 2018. The Scientific Programming Committee (SPC) met in March and reviewed many of the quality abstracts submitted for full papers. The short communication and poster abstract deadlines are April 15, so you still have time to participate in the annual meeting. Many thanks to Dr. Ashley Weaver, incoming Annual Program Chair of the Scientific Programming Committee and Dr. Jason Hallman for managing that process.

The newly revamped SPC structure spearheaded by Dr. Matt Maltese is working well and moving us forward. The SPC has been expanded to include many new members, thank you to all those who have indicated their interest and joined the SPC. We are championing an open process of inviting participation in our organization, so those who joined the SPC most recently were added primarily as the result of self-expressed interest.

We have updated our website to highlight more of the committee leadership of AAAM, including Chairs, Vice Chairs, and Subcommittee Chairs. I hope seeing the folks there will encourage you to reach out if you are interested to participate.

The Membership Task Force, chaired by President-Elect Dr. Marilyn Bull, has met via conference call twice since its launch in December and produced a draft report for increasing recruitment and retention of members. We will continue to encourage organizational involvement so we grow organically as well.

You’ll notice a nice new design concept for the annual conference created by Bostrom designer Josh Dobbs. It is inspired by the Haddon Matrix and used information from specific abstract topics to create data-driven graphics.

Dr. Rawson Wood’s policy committee has recently completed a review and update work on five of AAAM’s eight existing position statements, a list of which can be found on our website. The policy committee is forming a workgroup around the topic of autonomous vehicles to investigate the development of future position statements on the topic. If you’re interested to participate, please reach out to Dr. Wood, or express your interest online to get involved with the policy committee.

Don’t forget to submit abstracts for short communications and posters to this year’s annual meeting, due April 15. We’re hoping for a lot of interest in this part of our conference in this and coming years. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the future of AAAM is our young scientists – and we want to encourage you to have your students, and for student members, to consider submitting abstracts to the student symposium, with an abstract deadline of April 15 as well. That’s all for now.