Thank you to the 38 SDB volunteers that helped make our exhibit at the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, DC a success.  Over three days thousands of visitors were able to observe developing zebrafish, C. elegans, Xenopus and Coqui frogs.  Visitors learned about developmental adaptations in frogs through our Evolution Thought Trail Exercise and had the opportunity to design their own organism masks.  Thank you to Olympus and the Carnegie Institution for use of their microscopes.  Check out Expo photos here and photos of Marnie Halpern's Nifty Fifty visit to Our Lady of Perpetual Help School here.

Preparing the Vertebrate Animal Section (VAS) – is a new factsheet developed by the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) to assist applicants in completing the VAS of grant applications, contract proposals and cooperative agreements for submission to the NIH. Here you will find an overview of the requirements for each of the 5 must answered points of the VAS. The VAS factsheet can be found on the OLAW homepage under Fast Facts or downloaded at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/VASfactsheet_v12.pdf (PDF).  Additional information can be found in the VAS worksheets for Grant Applications (PDF) and Contract Proposals (PDF).

The SDB Board of Directors elected the following recipients for the 2012 SDB Awards.  The presentations will take place at the Awards Lectures session at the SDB 71st Annual Meeting in Montreal, July 19-23, 2012.

- E.G. Conklin Medal:  Cliff Tabin, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

- Developmental Biology-SDB Lifetime Achievement Award:  Antonio Garcia-Bellido,  Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

- Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize:  BioEYES, Co-Directors, Steve Farber and Jamie Shuda, Univ of  Pennsylvania, Carnegie Institution for Science and Univ of Notre Dame, USA.

SDB Collaborative Resources (CoRe) is SDB's online collection of images, movies, and diagrams for learning and teaching developmental biology.  You can now view objects submitted by your colleagues.  Help make CoRe a comprehensive developmental biology resource by submitting your visuals of development across many species.

NIGMS has established two new divisions that will administer existing Institute programs along with programs transferred to NIGMS from the former NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).  A news release on the reorganization is at: http://www.nigms.nih.gov/News/Results/20120104.htm

NIH recently published a new high-school curriculum supplement titled “Evolution and Medicine.” A number of NIGMS staff members helped develop and review the material.  You can see an outline of the supplement and order a copy for your own use or to share with others at:  http://science-education.nih.gov/customers.nsf/HSEvolution.htm. 

Two components of NSF’s Biology Directorate announce a significant change in proposal deadlines.  This change is very important to SDB members who are considering submitting NSF proposals in the fields of Developmental Biology, including the development of the nervous system; and on Evo/Devo research.  It is effective immediately and will affect everyone who was planning to submit a proposal during 2012.  We are no longer accepting full proposals in January.  Instead, we will accept pre-proposals on January 12, 2012 and invite a subset of those to submit full proposals on August 2, 2012.  Full proposals will not be accepted in January, and will be accepted in August by invitation only.  If you are writing, or considering writing, a new proposal or a revision for January 2012, it must be submitted as a pre-proposal.  If you were planning to submit a proposal during the summer of 2012, you must submit a pre-proposal in January 2012.  An exception is proposals for CAREER awards, which may be submitted on the due date listed in the CAREER solicitation.  They do not require pre-proposals.  The Special NSF Announcement is at: http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=BIO.  The solicitation is at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2011/nsf11572/nsf11572.htm

SDB Board of Directors invites members to actively participate in the many programs the Society carries out.  Find one that fits your personality and membership status and volunteer!  We also welcome suggestions and comments.  Details in “SDB Call for Volunteers”