XXXV ISPNE Annual Meeting

Minutes of the Business Meeting Held on July 19, 2004
Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Meeting called to order by Dirk Hellhammer, president.

  1. There was a moment of silence for Drs. David DeWied and Peter Beaumont.

  2. Membership Development - From 1/2000 through 7/2004 there were 104 new members in the Society. The Young Investigator program has been successful and the current meeting has a large number of these as participants.

  3. Regional Meetings -The Turkey Regional Meeting was a success. The meeting was held in Cappadocia, and there were 260 attendees from 15 countries. The Proceedings were published in the Turkish Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism. A Regional meeting is scheduled for Vilnius in 2006.

  4. The Bench to Bedside initiative was difficult to raise money for, although, there was interest. Michael Meaney has proposed a satellite to the Miami meeting in 2005.

  5. Summer Schools - A Program of summer seminars was started several years ago in Trier. Discussions with the Neuroimmunology Societies are underway.

  6. Financial Report - Alan Schatzberg presented the Financial Report for the Society (see attached). The Society has approximately $82,000.00 in the bank. There are currently 410 members in the ISPNE database (172 not yet paid for the year 2004, as of 7/8/04). The Young Investigator membership drive has been successful.

  7. The Journal PNEC - The number of issues yearly has increased from 8 to 10. Page size/format are now updated. Last year's submission-to-acceptance time was 23 weeks, but another 45 weeks to publication. This should improve. ISI ranking is up strongly. Submissions are 90-100/year.

  8. The Miami ISPNE meeting is scheduled for October 30 through November 2, 2005. Ethnicity will be one focus of the meeting. One of the members raised the question whether we are over-focusing our meetings. For example, the last two meetings have been on stress.

  9. Ron DeKloet presented the preliminary information on the Leiden 2006 meeting.

  10. The Regional Eastern Europe meeting is proposed for June 2006. There was discussion about competition with the Leiden meeting and moving it to 2007 or later in 2006.

  11. A proposal was presented for a St. Petersburg 2008 meeting. The 2001 Regional meeting had over 300 participants with a 50,000 Euro budget. The target would be for 500-700 participants. Several members spoke in favor of the meeting. Based on the 2004 Regional meeting, Turkey also proposes to host a 2008 meeting. The membership decided to award the 2008 meeting to St. Petersburg and the 2010 meeting to Turkey.

Minutes submitted by Alan F. Schatzberg, M.D. .

Secretary-General ISPNE 7/23/04.