Drosophila Board Election 2021 Dear Drosophila researcher,It is time to cast your vote for new members of the National Drosophila Board of Directors. The Board plays an important role in the Drosophila research community, so please take a few moments to learn about the Board and, importantly, participate in this election. The Board's duties include overseeing community resource centers and addressing other research and resource issues that affect the fly community. The Board also administers the finances for the annual North America Drosophila Research Conference and its associated awards, and it chooses the organizers and the site of the annual meeting. The Board consists of 13 regional representatives: Eight from the U.S. and one each from Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia/Oceania, and one representative for primarily undergraduate institutions, all of whom serve 3-year terms. The Board is led by three elected officers: a President, a President-Elect and a Treasurer. In addition, the Board has ex officio members, including past-Presidents, meeting organizers and representatives of the Drosophila community resource centers.This year we are electing the President-elect, who will serve as President starting with the Fly meeting in 2023. We are also electing regional representatives from Europe, Asia, Latin America, California, and the Mid-Atlantic.Please participate in this election! This is your opportunity to choose the individuals who will help set priorities and secure support for community resources. Balloting will end January 22, 2022. Thank you, The 2021 Drosophila Board Election Committee:Alisa Armstrong, Erika Geisbrecht, Tina Tootle, Iswar Hariharan, and Mark PeiferPlease click on the radio buttons next to the candidate bios below to make your selections. Click on the "Submit Votes" button after the last bio to submit your ballot. Question Title * 1. President-elect (Vote for ONE) Harmit Singh Malikhttps://research.fredhutch.org/malik/en.htmlI grew up in the city of Bombay (Mumbai), India where I got my BTech, Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Having been enamored by biology and evolution as an undergraduate, I then moved to the US to get my PhD in Biology, at the University of Rochester, NY with Dr. Thomas Eickbush. There, I began my nearly three decades long love affair with Drosophila melanogaster, studying the genetic consequences and evolutionary strategies of retrotransposable elements, especially the R1 and R2 retrotransposons that insert into the multicopy rDNA genes. In 1999, I moved to Seattle to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (the “Hutch"), to do my postdoc with Dr. Steve Henikoff to study the ‘centromere paradox’ i.e., rapid evolution of centromeric DNA and proteins despite essential function. In 2003, I started my own lab at the Hutch, where I am currently a Full Professor & co-Associate Director of the Division of Basic Sciences. In 2009, I was selected as an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and as a Full Investigator in 2013. My lab studies the causes and consequences of genetic conflicts that take place between different genomes (e.g., host-virus interactions, mitochondrial conflicts with nuclear genomes) or between components of the same genome (e.g., chromosomal competition at centromeric regions). We are interested in understanding these "molecular arms races" and how they drive recurrent genetic innovation, from the perspective of both evolutionary biology and disease. Much of our work focuses on Drosophila species; we use a combination of traditional genetics, genomics, and cell biology. I am most proud of the several postdocs and graduate students who have trained with us, many of whom are faculty in prestigious departments in the US and Europe and are considered leaders in their respective fields. Our work has received significant accolades for me and my lab members. Most recently, I was awarded the 2017 Eli Lilly Prize in Microbiology, the most prestigious prize awarded by the American Society of Microbiology and elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2019. I have been a member of GSA since graduate school. I have been a regular attendee at annual Drosophila meetings, where I have spoken several times, including as a Keynote speaker in 2021. I helped co-organize the 2019 Drosophila meeting in Dallas, TX. Previously, I was a Councilor and am currently the President of the Society of Molecular Biology & Evolution (SMBE). I also serve on the editorial boards of seven scientific journals and on the advisory board of five scientific institutes in the US, Europe, and Taiwan. I am passionate about the future success of scientific societies, model organism databases and research, and creating a scientific culture that values diversity and inclusion. Elizabeth Chenhttps://www.utsouthwestern.edu/labs/chen-elizabeth/research/ I received my undergraduate degree from Peking University in China before coming to the US to pursue my interest in life sciences. As a graduate student at Stanford, I fell in love with fly genetics and joined Bruce Baker’s lab to study how the sex determination pathway integrates with other developmental pathways to generate sexually dimorphic tissues. For my postdoctoral studies, I wanted to use the powerful fly genetics to tackle the problem of cell-cell fusion. I joined Eric Olson’s lab, which is primarily a mouse lab, and initiated a large-scale forward genetic screen for myoblast fusion mutants in Drosophila. Subsequent work in my own group at Johns Hopkins University (2004-2016) led to the discovery of the asymmetric fusogenic synapse, where one fusion partner extends membrane protrusion to invade the other to promote cell-cell fusion. Like many fundamental principles first discovered in Drosophila, the asymmetric fusogenic synapse has later been found to be a conserved feature underlying the fusion of vertebrate muscle and non-muscle cells. After my lab’s relocation to UT Southwestern Medical Center (2016-present), we continue to use interdisciplinary (genetics, cell biology and biophysics) and cross-species (fly, zebrafish and mouse) approaches to study the mechanisms underlying cell-cell fusion, actin cytoskeletal dynamics and mechanobiology.The fly community has profoundly influenced me as a scientist. My first scientific conference was the Drosophila Research Conference, an eye-opening experience for a young graduate student. Over the years, research in my lab has benefited tremendously from colleagues in the fly community and resources at the FlyBase. As a PI, I enjoyed chairing platform sessions at fly meetings and serving on the Election Committee of the Drosophila Board (2017-19) and the Drosophila Image Award Committee (2019-20). My other service experience includes being a member of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Advisory Council, the President of Society for Muscle Biology, and an organizer of international meetings in the fields of muscle biology and cell biology. It would be a great honor to continue giving back to the fly community by serving as the Fly Board President. I will continue the excellent work done by the past Boards and focus my efforts on advocating the importance of fly research; promoting interdisciplinary and cross-species studies; attracting young investigators to the field; enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion; and fundraising for the fly community. Next >>