President's Report



9th July 1999


My previous report was presented in February at the 17th ANZSMS Conference held at Thredbo Village, which was the first time that a conference was not held at an academic institution. The undoubted success of ANZSMS17, due largely to the outstanding organising efforts of Margaret Sheil and her Conference Committee, has resulted in a similar venue being chosen for ANZSMS18. This is to be held on the Queensland Gold Coast at Legends Hotel, Main Beach, from February 4th - 8th, 2001. With John Bartley as chair of the new Conference Committee (and an ex oficio member of the ANZSMS executive committee), planning is already well underway, with Carillon Conference Services being selected as the Conference Organiser. To date, two plenary lecture invitations have been accepted by Simon Gaskell (UMIST) and Frank Turecek (University of Washington). We hope to be able to announce the other plenary lecturers, including the Morrison Lecturer, shortly.

At ANZSMS17 the central committee provided $7000 in travel support and prizes to graduate students attending and presenting papers/posters at the conference. This financial support for students is to be continued for the next conference, as well as for participation at international conferences, such as ASMS and IMSC. A formal set of guidelines for applications is presently being drafted and should be available from the ANZSMS WWW site within the next month.

The Society has recently registered the WWW domain name of "www.anzsms.org". Unfortunately there has been a minor technical problem with the relevant nameserver location so it is not yet functional. A high quality version of the ANZSMS logo to replace the "temporary" one found on the WWW site is currently being prepared by Mike Guilhaus. This will also appear on all official ANZSMS correspondence.

In March this year the ANZSMS was accepted as a financial member of the newly formed International Mass Spectrometry Society. Our former president, John MacLeod, is Secretary of the IMSS.

This year the Society is very fortunate to have Professor Catherine Fenselau (University of Maryland) and Professor Robert Cotter (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) take part in the interconference special lecture programme. Professors Fenselau and Cotter are leading international authorities in their respective fields of biological and microbial applications of mass spectrometry and instrument development (especially time-of-flight MS) respectively. Professor Fenselau is the Associate Editor of Analytical Chemistry and Professor Cotter is the President of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. They will be presenting a series of mass spectrometry lectures at La Trobe University, the University of NSW and the University of Wollongong, following their involvement in the AISAS99 Conference in Melbourne. It is hoped to be able to invite another distinguished lecturer to Australia during 2000.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the efforts of Karina Watkins who has served as ANZSMS Treasurer since December 1996. Karina will be resigning from the central committee after the 1999 AGM in July.


John Traeger

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