Quantum Leap Year

Nancy Witty In 2002, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)was established toprovide forums for the exchange of information and ideas relating to stem cells, to strengthen global communication and collaboration between scientists, and to drive forward the field of stem cell research and its applications to medicine. Last year, the ISSCR entered its second decade and celebrated this milestone in conjunction with the ISSCR10 Annual Meeting, in Yokohama, Japan. We reaffirmed our goals and made administrative changes to ensure that we have the appropriate complementof talents inplace tomaintain our leadership role in promoting scientific excellence in the fields of stem cell research and regenerative medicine. As we enter our second decade, we continue to expand our platforms for communication and education and to explore new avenues for conversation. You are reading one of these today–Stem Cell Reports, our new open access journal, owned and operated by the ISSCR, with the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors drawn from leading scientists in the field. We are thrilled to present this inaugural issue of Stem Cell Reports, and we thank the ISSCR Board of Directors, and in particular, the Stem Cell Reports editorial team spear-headed by Christine Mummery, Editor-in-Chief, for their dedicated efforts. As another example, in the past several years, the ISSCR has expanded its meeting offerings to include a regional forum series to complement the annual meetings. The next regional forum will be held in Florence, Italy, September 15–18, 2013, with an emphasis on the transition of stem cell research to clinical medicine, followed by a second forum in Suzhou, China, October 14–18, 2013, which will be a diverse program including basic through translational science. Our goal is to constantly bring to the field the latest and most exciting stem cell discoveries, so that the best new science becomes the benchmark. The regional forums are one way to enhance the impact of this science. The annual meeting remains the premier international conference at which the stem cell and translational research community highlight the newest research trends. An incredible breadth and depth of science is offered from scientists, who attend this meeting from more than 55 countries, through plenary, concurrent, and poster sessions and the discussions that surround these. More than half of all this year’s speakers were selected from abstracts submitted by participants. In addition, the 2013 meeting in Boston will continue to feature one-minute ‘‘poster teaser’’ presentations during plenary sessions. This format has proved so popular that the Program Committee, building on this concept, added almost 60 five-minute ‘‘poster brief’’ presentations to the concurrent session schedule to spark conversations that will continue each evening at the poster receptions. Another recent initiative is ISSCR Connect, an online educational portal. The goal of ISSCR Connect is two-fold: first, to enhance the experience of those attending the ISSCRmeeting, and second, to providemembers with additional educational opportunities on a year-round basis and expand their access to the ISSCR’s annual meeting and regional forums. For meeting attendees, it provides planning tools in advance and access to content after the event. For the annual meeting, concurrent session talks recorded at the meeting are made available for a limited period following the meeting, a valuable feature as the size and breadth of the meeting continues to grow. ISSCR Connect also delivers additional monthly programming on selected new research topics and, for members, access to select talks from meetings they are not able to attend in person. We encourage you to tune in at the end of this month to explore content from the ISSCR’s 11 Annual Meeting. As the society has grown over the last ten years, we reached a threshold in which self-management became the best option. After careful consideration by leadership, the society moved into new offices in August 2012, and the transition of all administrative functions to independent management was completed by the end of the