Welcome to the summer newsletter for ESEB. This is a relatively unusual year in not having an ESEB or Joint congress, so we hope you are set to enjoy alternative meetings this summer.
The Easter meeting of the Steering committee took place in Munich in March and we took the opportunity to visit the site of the Munich hub for the 2027 hub meetings. The venue seemed very appropriate and the organising team are already working hard on this, as are all the teams at the different hubs. Further details of the 2027 meetings can be found at https://eseb2027.org/ (and below) and we are really looking forward to this unique venture. We will carefully survey reactions to it before deciding on the format of future congresses.
We also held an online Council meeting in May. We heard reports on the journals and the relatively healthy financial state of the society, largely due to the continuing success of JEB. Evolution Letters is also doing well and attracting top papers. As always, we encourage you to support our society journals. We have decided to offer the JEB Editor in Chief another extension to his role, which he accepted, He will start for another 2 years from August 1st 2027. Many thanks to Max for agreeing to this and the great job he and his team are doing.
As you are all no doubt aware, science in the US is currently suffering and further threatened by funding proposals being made by the current administration. Our sister society SSE is part of a group of US societies trying to document impacts of this on our science. We encourage you to read https://www.firsthandaccounts.org/home.
Thanks are due to Yuval Sapir who has stepped down from ESEB council recently, and to Flo Débarre who will take the resulting vacancy.
Please enjoy catching up with awards and news from our initiatives in the newsletter.
Why the hub conference next year?
Research suggests that plane travel to and from ESEB events likely contributes >90% of their carbon emissions. Therefore, as a part of ESEB‘s pledge for climate-neutral congresses, the 2027 edition is, for the first time, a Hub Congress. By pioneering the organisation of a Hub congress, ESEB wishes to act as a role model amongst scientific societies. The goal is to establish ESEB as a scientific community that is proactive and innovative in its response to the climate crisis, and to inspire its members to be more mindful of the environmental impact of (academic) travel. Other benefits include allowing a broader range of venues, in previously un-represented countries, increasing participation, reducing costs (for attendees and hopefully organisers) and to combine virtual networking with a local conference vibe with networking.
The Executive Committee
Mike Ritchie, Jonna Kulmuni, and Kees van Oers | 
