I am excited to attend the BPS 2022 annual meeting and super-happy to have been selected as an official meeting blogger. I will do my best to report on the meeting for you who are not there.It feels almost unreal that I will actually attend a live meeting in just a few days. The last physical conference I attended was the BPS annual meeting in San Diego in February 2020 (see picture right). 2 years ago. The keynote speaker delivered his lecture virtually due to worries around some new virus in China. At that time, we had no idea what would happen in the following months and years. In the last 2 years I have mostly worked from my house and I must, by now, have done a million of zoom meetings. At last year’s BPS annual meeting I stepped off Council virtually. It felt so distant and sad. Yes, zoom is good for many things, but in-person interactions are important. Even if Sweden did not have a complete lock-down, we had many restrictions, and the situation during the last 2 years has hampered both research progress and researchers’ careers all over the world. It has also negatively affected gender equality, in academia and elsewhere in society. And I worry about young scientists finishing and moving between positions. It has been tough times.

My own scientific highlight in the last two years took place last summer. Because I have an American passport, I was able to spend 6 weeks at Caltech on a mini sabbatical. It was so nice and stimulating to meet faculty and students in person and talk science. I also met with leaders of gender equality efforts at some Californian universities which gave helpful feedback to my work on this issue at home. Last summer was when I really understood how much I had missed live interactions. The Caltech visit gave me new energy. Now I need it again. The GRC conference I am co-chairing that was scheduled for this January (and I was looking forward to so much) was canceled last minute and will take place in October instead. So, I hope the BPS meeting will be this exciting happening that I, well we all, desperately need right now. The key purpose of the meeting for me will be to meet people and talk science. But yes, I have also tagged several interesting seminars in the BPS event app. The program looks stellar. I will receive my BPS Fellows Award just before the Biophysical Society Lecture which will be delivered by amazing Frances Arnold. I cannot wait.

The initial obstacle is to get to San Francisco. There is a lot of rules and regulations to follow in order to travel now, and they change continuously. Also, airlines cancel flights all the time. I think I have changed my flights 3 times due to this. But now I have an active ticket, and my vaccine certificate is accepted by the BPS conference app. Because I took my second shot this summer in America, which Sweden cannot recognize, I had to take my booster in Sweden as my formal second Swedish shot to get a valid EU vaccine certificate. Well, I anyway wanted a booster. I have booked a covid-19 antigen test for Thursday. This must be done the day before travelling and result uploaded in another app. As long as my test is negative, and I keep track of all apps and QR codes, I should be fine. Fingers crossed. I look forward to seeing old and new friends and to get a week of exciting science in a beautiful city!