At the next BLCS annual meeting in Aberdeen 2021 we are looking for nominations for Secretary, Treasurer, Communications Officer and for Ordinary members onto the steering committee.

Nominations for committee must be sent to the Secretary by 15th June 2021. Both nominees and nominators should be members of the Society and permission of the nominee must be obtained. Nomination forms are on the last page of this letter which you can download from this link: committee nominations.

I would encourage you all members to consider nominating for this great opportunity. For further details of current committee members you can view the Information Pages.

Abstract submission for both oral and poster presentations and Registration are now open via the conference website.

**New Extended Deadlines**

• Deadline for abstract submission: Mon 7 June 2021
• Deadline for late registration: Sun 20 June 2021

Important:

If you had registered previously for BLCS 2020, you should have received an email from our colleagues at CPD services regarding full or partial refunds and registration for this year: do not register again until you’ve spoken to CPD services! If you have not received the email and believe you should have, please get in touch with them directly at cpdservices@abdn.ac.uk. Please resubmit an abstract via the website even if you submitted one previously.

For those who did not register last year: More information can be found at our website https://www.blcs2020.org

Registration fees are: £20 (students) and £30 (non-students).

For further details and to register your interest please download this Expression of Interest form. Note the extended deadline for expressions of interest is 16th December 2020.

Programme
The final programme will be made available here in due course. The list of speakers confirmed so far is as follows:

The BLCS Student Hardship Fund aims to support PhD students near the end of their studies whose project has been delayed by Covid-19 and who have run out or are about to run out of funding. The fund is to be considered as a last resort, to be used if no other funding support, e.g. from research councils, is available. The fund is time limited. Applications will not be possible after the end of October 2021, but the fund may be extended should the need arise.

For full details of eligibility and application process, please read the following linked document: HardshipFund-201029.

We are living in extraordinary times. Life, as we know it, has stopped and we have entered a new area, which requires new modes of thinking, behaving and communicating. As scientists, we are used to it. How could research be anything else but permanent change and adapting to new situations?

This year we will change how the medal winners are announced. Traditionally the winners have been announced at the BLCS conference. It was never a big surprise, more an open secret. A look at the conference program was enough to see who won.  Under the present circumstances we have decided to break with the tradition and disclose the list of recipients before the conference since a new date for it is not yet decided and we do not want the cliff hanger to go on for too long.

The winners  of 2020 BLCS prize winners are

All recipients will receive the medals at the upcoming conference. They cannot escape the warm handshake, the party and the talks. These are our ‘Oscars’ and we need the ‘thank you’ speeches and the glamour of the conference dinner. Let’s hope that we will not wait for too long for that.

Keep well and keep thinking outside the box.