It is hard for me to believe that this is my final column as President of the Biophysical Society. My term will conclude with the Annual Meeting in San Diego where Cathy Royer will take the gavel from me and Frances Separovic will become President-elect. The Society is definitely in good hands! It has been an exciting and challenging year for the Society, and I continue to be in awe of the exceptional effort and dedication that I’ve seen every day from our staff and volunteers. I thank every one of you for your help and support.
As I wrote in my first column of the year the Biophysical Society has made progress in many areas of inclusion, such as attracting international members, diversifying speakers, and providing family rooms at the meeting. However, we still face many challenges of unconscious and conscious bias, and we need to focus more effort on building a diverse pipeline of future biophysicists.
Recently, the US National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) released a report on the climate and culture facing women in sciences, engineering, and medicine, which included a detailed accounting of the consequences of sexual harassment in these fields. While the focus of this report was the academic environment, many of the issues described involve scientific societies and meetings. We would be naïve to believe that we are excepted from such unwanted behaviors and actions at the Biophysical Society. One piece of evidence that suggests a problem is that the percentage of female members of the Society has remained constant at approximately 30 percent, although close to 50 percent of student members are female. There is no single reason for this. Anecdotally, each female scientist who has left the profession has a unique story of the challenges that drove her away. Many of these reasons have a broad range of underpinnings from belittling to being passed over for growth opportunities to sexual assault. There is no single action we can take to eliminate the climate and culture that is driving talent away from our field. Rather, this will require a process of continuous change. We need to recognize and call out unconscious bias, we need peer pressure showing that bad behaviors are not acceptable, and we need to listen carefully to those who feel disenfranchised. This will not happen overnight, so it is important to pay continuous attention to these efforts and to keep working at it every day.
The Society has scheduled a special symposium on Sunday, February 16, at 6:15 pm to discuss what we all can do to combat sexual harassment. The symposium will include presentations from Sharona Gordon, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Washington, and Billy Williams from the American Geophysical Union and a contributor on the NASEM report. I will describe the policies and actions that the Society has undertaken in this area, and Gabriella Popescu, Chair of our Committee on Professional Opportunities for Women (CPOW), will moderate the discussion. We hope that you will join us for this next step toward creating an environment that is free of inappropriate behavior and harassment by or toward all attendees and participants of Society events.
This year, we have focused on sexual harassment in the Society, prompted by the work of the National Academies. However, gender bias is only one way that the Society fails to be inclusive — the climate and culture of academic societies can be even more oppressive for other under-represented groups. I remain hopeful that BPS will become a model for diversity and inclusion, and continue to attract and serve a broader constituency. Towards this latter goal, we must all work together to increase the numbers of colleagues from under-represented groups in biophysics, and promote them as leaders in the field and in the Society. My term as BPS President will be ending, but I know that future leaders of the Society will continue the commitment to inclusion for all of our members.
I am heartened by the willingness of the Society membership to acknowledge these problems and work to fix them. Doing so will only strengthen biophysics as a science and a profession, and I for one look forward to helping turn this hope into reality. I send my best wishes to all of you for 2020, and I look forward to seeing you in San Diego for our 64th Annual Meeting!
—David W. Piston, President