The 2011 year is quickly coming to a close. This past year has been a successful year. The 61st annual conference was organized by Andrew Lang and his local organizing committee. An excellent scientific program coupled with an impressive social event ensured all participants that a good time was had by all!
Due to a number of years of profitable annual conferences and increased membership, has given the CSM increased resources. Over the past years this has allowed us to update our website, add features such as “meet the microbiologist” : http://www.csm-scm.org/english/mem_meet.asp , as well as support up to two $500 awards to promote student oriented activities. This year we are proud to announce two new awards. One of these is aimed at undergraduate students enrolled in microbiology classes, the other, an award that is aimed at senior PhD students that allows them the opportunity to travel to other institutions to talk about their research. The details are available on the CSM Award page: http://www.csm-scm.org/english/awards_list.asp and we hope to award the first of these awards at the upcoming annual conference.
On behalf of the local organizing committee I would like to extend an invitation for all to attend this year conference. This year’s 62nd CSM Annual Conference is being organized by Bill Mohn, Lindsay Eltis, and Julian Davies at the University of British Columbia campus. It will be held immediately following the ASM meeting on June 20-23rd 2012. To date, Jonathan Eisen, UC Davis, Jeff Miller, UCLA, and David Relman, Stanford University are confirmed as plenary speakers. The scientific sessions planned are ost-pathogen interactions, microbial biotechnology, human microbiome, horizontal gene transfer and population genetics, antibiotic discovery and resistance, and envirogenomics are planned.  Please refer to the CSM conference page: http://www.csm-scm.org/english/conf_upcoming.asp  and the UBC CSM conference page: http://www.csm2012.ca/  for deadline dates and more information.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank the many long-standing members for their continued support of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists. We encourage you to contact members of the executive: http://www.csm-scm.org/english/about_exec_exec.asp  to let us know how we can better serve the membership. Within the New Year we hope to be able to grow our membership so that we can continue to increase our ability to offer services to our members.
In closing, on behalf of the entire CSM executive, I would like to extend Seasons Greetings and wish everyone all the best for upcoming year.

CSM President Newsletter - December 2011