Ninetieth Meeting

November 5, 2007, 5:00 PM (Stellar-Chance 104)

1. Welcome / Attendance:

BPC: Stacy Gelhaus, Mikolaj Pawlak, Arindam Basu, Laurence Wood, Yuko Kimura, David Hokey, Meda
Higa, Matt Seavey, Koichi Matsumura, Laurence Jacquot, Prema Sundaram
BPP: Kryste Ferguson
Absent:: Yvonne Paterson, Dave Chimento, Hedi Schelleman

2. Major BPC and BPP projects: Kryste Ferguson and Subcommittees

a. Symposium—Recapped the symposium and addressed issues regarding attendance during the day
and how many people were late to hang their posters. Also, there was a symposium “pre-meeting”
where we discussed the value of a symposium manual. We will start working on this sometime in
the near future. This will outline all the steps necessary to planning a good symposium from when
to choose the speaker to the necessary requirements for the day of the symposium. We also have
the foundation for a symposium committee including Kryste Ferguson, Stacy Gelhaus, Miku
Pawlak, Dave Hokey, Laurence, Arindam, and Meda. We need to pick a Lisa Marshall winner from
the oral presentations and this will be done within the next week or so. Also, we are going to start
thinking of a list of speakers for 2009 since Robert Sapolsky is going to speak next year. Stacy will
contact Robert Sapolsky to finalize a date for the symposium so Kryste can reserve BRB
auditorium/lobby.
b. Seminar Series— The new seminar series kicked off on November 1 st with a talk from Debbie
Gilead and then refreshments. The problem seems to be that many people still came after her talk
just for the food so we are trying to figure out a way to solve this problem without taking away
from the social/networking atmosphere of having some sort of reception afterwards. Venue changes
were also discussed as well as which speakers are lined up for the coming year. Laurence has a list
of people lined up to speak in the spring/summer.
c. UCKIZ—Matt Seavey was at the meeting to represent PBG and discuss two topics, first UCKIZ
which stands for University City Keystone Inovation Zone. Ultimately this group can act as a
liason between academia and industry. Hugo Fitzgerald will come next meeting to discuss the
possibilities of this consortium interacting with the BPP/BPC. This will include speakers, adding to
our “working in industry” section of the career program, etc. The second idea Matt brought to the
table was the “Philly Healthcare Trek”. He was able to go and visit three companies on one day,
learn about their labs, human resources, company attitudes and atmosphere, etc. This was organized
by Wharton/PBG and he thinks it will be good for the BPs. However, we need someone like Matt
to take this projet head-on and find out how much work it will be to organize. We would have to do
a pre-registration for $20 to make sure people showed up and it would be first come first serve as
only a limited number of postdocs could attend.
d. Insurance: Enrollment will be in mid November. Changes to the insurance include the addition of
medical and dental PPOs, repatriation of remains, occupational health. Overall there is a 12.2%
increase in premiums. Also, we negotiated with Aetna to bring the copay down for prescriptions. If
we can get postdocs to use generics more often, this copay will decrease further.
e. Recruitment: New postdocs came to the council meeting. One from the Monell Center—Koichi
Matsumura and one from Vet—Prema Sundaram
3. Next meeting: December 3, 2007, 5pm Stellar Chance Room 104