Message from the President

Caribbean Division looks forward to the next 25 years

The Caribbean Division celebrated last year our 25th Anniversary.  We held a very successful annual conference (see news report here and here) in September honoring our Past Presidents and were honored to receive the visit of the AAAS President Alice S. Huang. Dr. Huang delivered the 25th Anniversary Dinner talk titled: Best Practices for Increasing Women and Minority Participation in STEM Research (available here).  In addition, we held a workshop (see news report here) in collaboration with Haitian scientists on Advancing Science and Science Education Capacity in Haiti whose final report will be delivered soon to the Haitian government and our Haitian colleagues (see news report here).  We also held our first activity related to Science and Human Rights with the visit of Prof. Jessica Wyndham from the AAAS who participated in a Forum on this subject with a talk titled: Defining and Applying the Right to Benefit from Science – A Unique Role for the Americas (available here).

This year we are excited that our Annual Conference, which will be held on October 1, 2011 at the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, will focus on the theme: Genetics, Environment and Society.  We are dedicating our Annual Conference to Dr. Juan C. Martínez-Cruzado, a pioneer in the studies of mitochondrial DNA on the island.  We will have concurrent sessions on Genetics and on Chemistry (the chemistry one will be celebrating the International Year of Chemistry) and workshops for teachers and future teachers and for students.  We will also hold during the Annual Conference the Robert I. Larus Award competition for graduate students.
In addition, we have joined forces with the Puerto Rico Section of the American Chemical Society and have already conducted five Science Cafés around the island.  The Science Cafés has been very successful and have allowed us to engage the general public in discussions related to science matters.  We are grateful to Amgen for providing support to our outreach efforts.

We also wish to announce that Dr. Abel Baerga, professor at the Biochemistry Department of the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, has been chosen to serve as President-Elect of the Caribbean Division.  His term as President of the Division will start at the end of the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver in February. 
We continue this year our outreach to members of the Division in the Caribbean Basin.  We hope many of you can join us as we look forward to our next 25 years advancing science, serving society.