![]() | |
Abbreviation | ASM |
---|---|
Formation | 1899 |
Type | Learned society, Nonprofit |
Purpose | to promote and advance the microbial sciences |
Location |
|
Field | Microbiology |
Membership | 30,000 |
Website | asm |
Formerly called | Society of American Bacteriologists |
The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), originally the Society of American Bacteriologists, is a professional organization for scientists who study viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and protozoa as well as other aspects of microbiology. It was founded in 1899. The Society publishes a variety of scientific journals, textbooks, and other educational materials related to microbiology and infectious diseases. ASM organizes annual meetings, as well as workshops and professional development opportunities for its members.
ASM was founded in 1899 under the name the "Society of American Bacteriologists." In December 1960, it was renamed the "American Society for Microbiology." [1]
ASM's mission is "to promote and advance the microbial sciences." [2] The society seeks to accomplish this mission through:
ASM has more than 36,000 members, including researchers, educators and health professionals. Membership is open to all and is offered at a discounted rate to students, postdoctoral fellows and emeritus faculty. Members pay annual dues to support the activities of ASM. [3] ASM's newest Clinical Lab Scientist membership category was established in 2019.
ASM provides professional development opportunities and supports microbiology professionals through 60 fellowships and 300 travel awards, webinars, conferences, workshops, networking opportunities, continuing education and honorific awards.
ASM hosts meetings and conferences, including the annual meeting ASM Microbe, that provide forums to explore microbiology topics.
ASM Microbe, a combination of what was formerly the ASM General Meeting and the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, includes sessions in eight specialty tracks:
Other ASM meetings and conferences cater to narrower audiences, including: ASM Biothreats (formerly ASM Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research) which focuses on biodefense and emerging diseases, the Clinical Virology Symposium which focuses on viral infections, the Conference for Undergraduate Educators which focuses on biology education at the undergraduate level and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students which highlights microbiology research from underrepresented populations.
ASM publishes 18 journals. ASM accepts format-neutral submissions for all primary research journals since 2018. ASM's open-access journals are:
Other ASM journals include:
The society also publishes Microcosm , a quarterly news magazine for members. Through its publishing arm ASM Press, the society publishes books covering diverse topics. Wiley is co-publisher and distributor of the ASM Press books and ebooks.
The American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) is the honorific leadership group within the American Society of Microbiology, a professional organization for microbiologists. The academy is currently composed of over 2,600 Fellows. [5]
The mission of the academy is to "recognize outstanding contributions provided by microbiologists and to provide microbiological expertise to both the wider scientific community and the public." [6] Activities of the academy include electing new members, convening colloquia, and managing the ASM Awards and Prize program. Academy leadership is divided into four groups: the Academy Governors, the Academy Leadership Nominating Subcommittee, the Subcommittee on Awards, and the Subcommittee on Elections.
The AAM was first proposed in 1956. The original organization was dissolved in 1970, when new bylaws were accepted. [7]
The AAM elects a new class each year. As of 2020, each year 65 new members are elected. [8] [9] That number has fluctuated historically to as many as 110. [9] Membership is not exclusive to American residents, and indeed 19% of members currently live outside the U.S. [9] The 2021 class of Fellows included representatives of 11 countries, including France. [10]
In 2021, there were 150 nominations, [11] and 130 nominations the following year. [9] [12] The call for nominations begins in August. Only current AAM fellows can nominate a new fellow, and that nomination must be supported by at least two other AAM fellows. Candidates cannot apply for fellowship directly, but can reach out to current fellows to seek nomination. The nomination deadline is in October. The Sub-committee of Elections and the Academy Governors, which are composed of AAM members elected by the entire AAM membership, then vote to approve of the nominations.
Members of the AAM are elected through an annual peer-reviewed process based on their records of scientific achievements that have advanced microbiology. The academy administers ASM scientific achievement awards that honor important contributions to basic and applied research, microbiology education, and scientific and professional leadership. [9] There is no limit to the number of times a person can be nominated, nor an age limit for nomination. [9] Notable academy members include Anthony Fauci (former director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease) and Rita Colwell (former director of the National Science Foundation).
The AAM holds colloquia, sometimes in conjunction with other scientific societies, on topics pertinent to public interests and the expertises of its members. Topics include climate change, [13] [14] [15] One Health, and clinical diagnostics. Reports from the colloquia are made publicly available.
In addition to communicating via colloquium reports, mBio, a journal launched by ASM in 2009, offers an ‘AAM track’ where AAM members are allowed to submit one manuscript per year. [16] Fellows are required to submit two reviews per submission, make modifications that address the reviewers’ comments, then submit the revised version to the mBio editors. [16] However, submission does not guarantee acceptance.
The AAM also selects an Honorary Diversity Lecturer. This award, aimed to attract more under-represented minorities to the field, is given to a mid-to-senior level scientist who is both highly accomplished and an "outstanding" speaker. [17]
The American College of Microbiology (ACM) certified microbiologists and immunologists and provided accreditation of postdoctoral training programs. [18]
ASM promotes a public understanding of microbiology through science festivals, public outreach campaigns and museum exhibits. [22] [23] ASM engages the science-interested public and microbiologists through articles reaching nearly 25,000 readers per month, 9 podcasts [24] with 1.5 million downloads and close to half a million social media followers. ASM also runs an annual agar art contest. [25] [26] [27]
ASM produces eight podcasts, including This Week in Microbiology, [28] This Week in Virology , and This Week in Parasitism, hosted by Vincent Racaniello. Mundo de los Microbios hosted by Gary Toranzos, is ASM's weekly Spanish-language podcast. Meet the Microbiologist is a podcast hosted by Julie Wolf, Ph.D., that showcases the people behind the scientific discoveries in various cutting-edge areas of the microbial sciences. [29]
ASM empowers members to advocate for the highest standards in scientific practice and provides members opportunities to advocate for evidence-based scientific policy.
In 2011, ASM made a concerted effort to address the lack of visibility of its policy arm, specifically in promoting the interests of clinical microbiologists. The Public and Scientific Affairs Board Professional Affairs Committee and Committee on Laboratory Practices was active in influencing policy decisions through Congress, the Clinical Laboratory Coalition, the FDA, and the CDC. [30]
ASM restructured its advocacy program to enhance its effectiveness in Washington, D.C., and its expansion to the Branches and various local communities. In 2018, ASM engaged members of Congress and issued statements in conjunction with Congressional hearings focusing on recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like the measles. In 2017 and 2018, ASM played a leading role, working with coalition partners, to raise the federal budget caps and advance funding for science and public health agencies like the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, National Institute for Food and Agriculture at the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ASM members sent nearly 2,000 messages to Members of Congress in support of increased science funding. Noteworthy is the appreciation of ASM by CDC, since raising the caps made specifically possible the construction of the new biocontainment lab.
In 2018, ASM advocated successfully for establishing PACCARB (President's Advisory Council for Combatting Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria) into the law (from an Obama administration Executive Order), by including language in the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. ASM convened a meeting with more than 20 stakeholder groups to discuss a collective path forward for federally-focused advocacy in support of microbiome research.
Claire M. Fraser is an American genome scientist and microbiologist who has worked in microbial genomics and genome medicine. Her research has contributed to the understanding of the diversity and evolution of microbial life. Fraser is the director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, where she holds the Dean's Endowed Professorship in the School of Medicine. She has joint faculty appointments at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology/Immunology. In 2019, she began serving a one-year term as President-Elect for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which will be followed by a one-year term as AAAS president starting in February 2020 and a one-year term as chair of the Board of Directors in February 2021.
Farooq Azam is a researcher in the field of marine microbiology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California San Diego. Farooq Azam grew up in Lahore and received his early education in Lahore. He attended University of Punjab, where he received his B.Sc. in chemistry. He later he received his M.Sc. from the same institution. He then went to Czechoslovakia for higher studies. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After he received his PhD, Farooq Azam moved to California. Azam was the lead author on the paper which coined the term microbial loop. This 1983 paper involved a synthesis between a number of leaders in the (then) young field of microbial ecology, specifically, Azam, Tom Fenchel, J Field, J Gray, L Meyer-Reil and Tron Frede Thingstad.
Microbiology is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being of unicellular (single-celled), multicellular, or acellular. Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, bacteriology, protistology, mycology, immunology, and parasitology.
Niyaz Ahmed is an Indian molecular epidemiologist, professor of microbial sciences, genomicist, and a veterinarian by training, based in Hyderabad.
Roberto Kolter is Professor of Microbiology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, an author, and past president of the American Society for Microbiology. Kolter has been a professor at Harvard Medical School since 1983 and was Co-director of Harvard's Microbial Sciences Initiative from 2003-2018. During the 35-year term of the Kolter laboratory from 1983 to 2018, more than 130 graduate student and postdoctoral trainees explored an eclectic mix of topics gravitating around the study of microbes. Kolter is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Norman Richard Pace Jr. is an American biochemist, and is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado. He is principal investigator at the Pace lab.
Edward Francis DeLong, is a marine microbiologist and professor in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and is considered a pioneer in the field of metagenomics. He is best known for his discovery of the bacterial use of the rhodopsin protein in converting sunlight to biochemical energy in marine microbial communities.
Karen Nelson is a Jamaican-born American microbiologist who was formerly president of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). On July 6, 2021 she joined Thermo Fisher Scientific as Chief Scientific Officer.
Arturo Casadevall is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Alfred and Jill Sommer Professor and Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease research, with a focus on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis and basic immunology of antibody structure-function. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
B. Brett Finlay, is a Canadian microbiologist well known for his contributions to understanding how microbes cause disease in people and developing new tools for fighting infections, as well as the role the microbiota plays in human health and disease. Science.ca describes him as one of the world's foremost experts on the molecular understanding of the ways bacteria infect their hosts. He also led the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative (SAVI) and developed vaccines to SARS and a bovine vaccine to E. coli O157:H7. His current research interests focus on pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella pathogenicity, and the role of the microbiota in infections, asthma, and malnutrition. He is currently the UBC Peter Wall Distinguished Professor and a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories, Microbiology and Immunology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Co-director and Senior Fellow for the CIFAR Humans and Microbes program. He is also co-author of the book Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World and The Whole-Body Microbiome: How to Harness Microbes - Inside and Out - For Lifelong Health. Finlay is the author of over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals and served as editor of several professional publications for many years.
Nikos Kyrpides is a Greek-American bioscientist who has worked on the origins of life, information processing, bioinformatics, microbiology, metagenomics and microbiome data science. He is a senior staff scientist at the Berkeley National Laboratory, head of the Prokaryote Super Program and leads the Microbiome Data Science program at the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.
Rup Lal is an Indian molecular biologist known for his work in molecular biology, genomics, metagenomics and taxonomy of microbial diversity inhabiting extreme niches. His research has led to the development of novel analogue of rifamycin, identification and functional characterization of microbial communities at Manikaran hotsprings atop the Himalyan Ranges in Himachal Pradesh and deciphering the role of microbes in degradation of Hexacholorocyclohexane (HCH) at a polluted dumpsite located at Ummari village, Lucknow, India. He has over 45 years of strong and longstanding experience in administration, teaching and research in various capacities at University of Delhi, India. He was ASM Ambassador for India (2012-2015), presently the ISME and FEMS Ambassador to India and Ambassador to International Microbial Literacy Initiative-South Asia Centre. He was a visiting scientist at the University of Cambridge, University of Kaiserslautern, Oregon State University, EPFL, University of Lausanne, ETH-EAWAG, Zurich, CSIRO- Canberra (Australia) and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig. He is recipient of several prestigious fellowships: Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, DBT- Overseas Fellowship, Indo-US-ASM Professorship in Microbiology, Australian Government Endeavour Executive Fellowship (2018-2019), ASM Moselio Schaechter Distinguished Service Award, Prof. S.R. Vyas Memorial Award, Prof. BN Johri Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from AMI(Association of Microbiologists of India), and Best ISME Ambassador-2022, Editor-in-Chief Indian Journal of Microbiology (2006-2013) and editorial board member- mSystems, ISME- Communication, Environmental-Microbiology/Reports, BMC-Biotechnology/Biochemistry, Microbial-Biotechnology, Indian Journal of Microbiology.
Robin Patel is a Canadian born microbiologist and Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine, a Professor of Microbiology, and a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. She is widely recognized as a leader in the field of clinical microbiology and has held a variety of leadership positions including 2019–2020 President of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and Director of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) Laboratory Center of the National institutes of Health. She is currently the Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic, and Director of the Mayo Clinic's Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, where she studies biofilms, antimicrobial resistance, periprosthetic joint infection and diagnostic testing of bacteria.
Abigail A. Salyers was a microbiologist who pioneered the field of human microbiome research. Her work on the bacterial phylum Bacteroidetes and its ecology led to a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. At a time where the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity. She was one of the first to conceptualize the human body as a microbial ecosystem. Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Carol A. Nacy is a microbiologist and immunologist focused on the immune response of bacterial and parasitic disease.
Stephen Joseph Giovannoni is an American microbiologist whose research mainly focuses on marine microbes. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Marine Science.
Ronald Oremland was an American microbiologist, astrobiologist, and emeritus senior scientist at the United States Geological Survey. He authored over 200 papers on the microbiology of extreme habitats.
Albert Balows was an American clinical microbiologist. He was the president of the American Society for Microbiology in 1981.
Yvonne Lue is a Jamaican doctor who works in the field of medical microbiology. Lue is one of the few Black women who have led clinical microbiology since the 1950-70s. She is the President for the New York City Branch of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
Pratyoosh Shukla is an Indian Microbiologist specialized in Enzyme technology and Protein Bioinformatics. He is presently working as Professor and Coordinator of the School of Biotechnology at the Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He was awarded with Indo-USA Research Professor at Department of Environmental Health, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, USA in the year 2014 by American Society of Microbiology (ASM) and Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). He is Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS), Fellow of Academy of Microbiological Sciences (FAMSc/FAMI), Fellow of Biotech Research Society of India (FBRS).