PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE B Y Paul van den B rink
With our meetings at Milan in Italy, Boston in the United States, Buea in Cameroon, Cumana in Venezuela and Dar win in Australia, we successfully strengthened SETAC as a worldwide organization. The latter three meetings were further landmarks, helping the Society establish a stronger foundation outside its traditional membership centers of North America and Europe. This confirms our success as we strive to meet the expressed ambition of SETAC to be a worldwide not-for-profit professional society.
The year started in auspicious fashion with the members of the Australasian Society for Ecotoxicology (ASE) joining the SETAC family as the SETAC-Australasia Chapter (SETAC AU) of SETAC Asia/Pacific. The EnviroTox2011meeting held in April 2011 in Darwin, Australia, continued the tradition of joint meetings of the Royal Australian Chemistry Institute (RACI) and ASE, and was the inaugural meeting of SETAC AU. The meeting was attended by more than 200 local, regional and international delegates and confirmed the strong development of the field of environmental toxicology and chemistry in Australasia. We are looking forward to developing this field even further in the Asia/ Pacific region with the help of, among others, our new colleagues from SETAC AU. 2
The SETAC Africa Branch meeting, held in May and June 2011 in Buea, Cameroon, together with the Cameroon Society for Toxicological Sciences (CSTS), was a notable success. It was inspiring to see the enthusiasm and dedication of the local organizers and conference participants as they worked to spread the word on environmental toxicology and chemistry, something that is greatly needed in that fast-developing continent. The meeting was particularly important for SETAC because it marked a milestone toward welcoming Africa as a full geographic unit within the Society. We were also pleased to connect with the Africa Education Initiative (NEF) and are exploring ways in which SETAC and NEF can partner to support science and professional networking in support of capacity building in Africa. With these steps, SETAC will become truly