11 FN: flavell

Richard A. Flavell, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Immunobiology, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has been elected the first president of the newly formed International Cytokine and Interferon Society (ICIS). He will take office effective in 2014 and serve through 2015.

The ICIS is a non-profit organization of more than 600 scientists who study interferon, cytokine and chemokine cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and the clinical use of these biological response modifiers. The society was formed this year through the merger of two existing organizations, the International Society for Interferon and Cytokine Research (ISICR), and the International Cytokine Society (ICS). “These organizations have come to study very similar things and it was felt that they had more in common than they did not, and therefore the merger made the most sense,” said Flavell, who received the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science from the ISICR in 2013. “One society started off focused on interferon and the other was centered around cytokines in the immune system. They were doing very similar things and there were some joint conferences over the years.”

The new society announced its formation in March. The possibility of a merger had first emerged seven years earlier and a year ago about 90 percent of the members of the two societies endorsed the merger. This month the new society will host its first annual meeting in San Francisco. Current officers and committees will remain in place until new leadership takes office in 2014.

“The main thing,” said Flavell of his presidency, “will be to effect the merger and get the activities streamlined so that the way we do things is homogeneous. It will be to get the cultures to mesh.”