It is once again the holiday season and end of the last year of the 2nd decade of the 21st century!
We are thankful for so many things that have happened this year in our society.
(1)
We unified the field world-wide and held our first North American conference in Orlando April of 2019. Close to 900 attendees participated in an intense set of session showing progress in many areas of research. Our keynote speaker, Judge Leifman from Miami made us vividly aware of how much still needs to be done to treat schizophrenia in the prisons, but advances have been made. Other sessions contributed many novel ideas and finding. In case you missed any of it, go to the
Rapporteur's report by Dr. Sanja Kilian and colleagues (Psychiatry Research, is press open access:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517811932219X
)
(2)
Under the leadership of Sohee Park our focus on diversifying the society geographically, culturally and by gender has added to the richness of our interactions and conferences.
(3)
We have established a method to encourage and facilitate collaborations internationally by now having "Interest groups" provided with space at our meetings and advertisement on our website. We hope the formation of these new collaborations initiated at SIRS meetings and by the society’s infrastructure will advance the field significantly further.
(4)
We successfully advertised for, had a rigorous structured and transparent selection process through a committee of senior members, and funded out first direct Research Award sponsored by SIRS. This award is for an investigator in any stage of her/his career who has a novel idea that will have a significant impact on patient care for the current generation but has no funds to carry out the necessary research. This year there were 98 applications for this 1st Research Award and we had the funds to support one such stipend. This went to Yoji Hirano from Osaka, Japan for conducting neurofeedback for patients with schizophrenia.
(5)
We have established an active Fundraising Committee to rigorously tap into mechanisms of funding for all our research and educational activities outside of the annual congress and hired a Fund Raising Consultant to pave the way forward.
It has been a great 2019 for our society!
What we can look forward to in 2020:
(1)
A scientifically outstanding program has been prepared by our hard working and dedicated program committee under the strong direction and leadership of Deanna Barch and Peter Falkai. Thank you, Deanna and Peter, for this tremendous time-consuming effort for SIRS and to make the April 2020 Florence conference one of the very best yet. There are innovative, timely and controversial plenary sessions for which you will want to make sure to be present. We have a couple of outstanding and inspiring keynote speakers this year, Cecilia McGough and Brandon Staglin--reminding us of what can be done with hope and dedication. I very much look forward to greeting you there.
(2)
A new president will be handed the reigns of the society for 2 years, beginning at the end of our April congress--Til Wykes. She will be joined by a new president-elect that will be voted on after the holidays and the first of the new year. I hope you will exercise your voting rights as a member of this society to select this person, as she or he will be serving in the executive committee for a total of 5 years to help shape the future of the society. I will stay on, as per our Bylaw for 1 more year as past president to advice and see through some of my unfinished recommendations.
(3)
New members can join activities of the society through committee work--and I hope new generations of researchers will come forth to lead us into timely new projects for the future.
I wish you all the greatest joy and success in this holiday season with your colleagues and families. This is also the season of giving. I truly hope that you will feel strongly as I do that SIRS has become an essential society that facilitates progress in schizophrenia research and ultimately will be a force behind improving the lives of people with schizophrenia. In order to continue our Research Award and our education programs for young investigators, we need your support. Please consider donating to SIRS as one of your charitable contributions for the year, as I have. All donations go 100% directly for our above programs and you can specify that you want yours to go either toward the Research Award Fund or any other activity of your choice.
