Dear Colleagues,
Greetings and wishing good health to you and your loved ones. Despite the challenges that we continue to face with the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination campaign and return to “normal” is well underway. It was wonderful, albeit a little weird, to be back at SOT in person in beautiful San Diego this past March. For me, it was the largest venue and crowd I had been in since November 2019.
Your Regulatory and Safety Evaluation Specialty Section (RSESS) leadership is energized and ready to jump into the 2022–2023 year. I am inspired to be leading this organization with a group of exceptional officers including Annette Körner (Past President), Hilary Sheever (Vice President), Senthilkumar Pk (Vice President-Elect), Angélique Braen (Secretary/Treasurer), Sherleen Adamson (Sr. Councilor), and Jessica Sapiro (Jr. Councilor). We are proud to continue with our two student representatives Jacklyn “Skye” Kelty (Postdoctoral Representative) and Carmen Amelia Marable (Graduate Student Representative).
Looking back to the Annual Meeting in San Diego, although we did not have as many attendees at our annual mixer as usual, we had a great time with our first Elsevier Award, the 3-Minute Thesis (3MT), and learned a lot about how to make the next year’s 3MT better. We also got a wonderful response to our call to bring the RSESS Endowment Fund over the $50,000 finish line to bring it to permanent status. I am very pleased to say that with a couple large donations and company matches we were able to exceed our goal! The Fund is intended to encourage research and training, scientific progress, collaboration, and the modernization of the fields of safety evaluation and regulatory toxicology. It is primarily intended to be used to provide monetary awards to graduate students and/or postdocs and can also be used to help provide support for SOT programs that help foster the sharing of knowledge related to scientific progress in safety evaluation and regulatory toxicology. Our next step is establishing an Endowment Fund Committee which will be chaired by Annette, Skye, and Carmen with additional members from the RSESS membership. They will use the next year to create the Committee and define the objectives and remit.
Knowing that not everyone was able to attend the SOT meeting in person, we had a Virtual Meet & Greet on May 4. We kept the business portion of the meeting brief and focused on the meet and greet, breaking into small groups to network. For some groups it was purely social, for others it was all science, and a bit of both for others. Everyone seemed to have a great time and was in favor of doing it again in the future.
We are currently reviewing session proposals for the 2023 SOT Annual Meeting in Nashville. Our Programs Committee is chaired by Claire Neilan and nine volunteers from our RSESS membership. This Committee has once again done a fantastic job pre-reviewing and reviewing submissions on a short timeline. We received 22 proposals spanning risk assessment, hazard identification, new approach mechanisms (NAMs), agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and more! Please have a look into Claire’s article in our upcoming Summer newsletter to hear more about it.
Did you know that RSESS is almost 30 years old? RSESS was established 1993 and the Executive Committee is actively brainstorming on ways to celebrate the milestone next year. Stay tuned!
Finally, our organization is only as strong as its membership. Please consider looking for ways to become more involved: volunteer for a committee, write an article for the newsletter, make us aware of new or draft guidances in your area of focus so that we can share it with broader RSESS membership, make a contribution to the Endowment Fund (big or small, it all adds up!), or run for an officer role. Contact me or any of our officers for more information on how to get involved.
Be well!
Kristina D. Chadwick, PhD, DABT
2022–2023 RSESS President
The mission of the Regulatory and Safety Evaluation Specialty Section of the SOT is to promote the development of sound governmental policies and regulations based on contemporary scientific knowledge arising from the disciplines encompassed by toxicology.