The pair then gathered colleagues from both societies and the IUBMB to create an international advisory board, including another ASBMB past-president, Judith Bond. “Judy had made expanding Pan-American initiatives one of her goals during her presidential tenure a few years back, unfortunately, due to various circumstances it didn’t quite work out,” says Masters. “Now, though, it seemed external forces were working in our favor, and she’s been instrumental in helping set this course up.”

The program organizers believe this course on biofuels will help foster new contacts between scientists from numerous countries and entice more promising young scientists to enter this important – and global – field of research.

Down the road, the advanced course in biofuels is envisioned to be just the first part of a three-year (and hopefully beyond) cooperative commitment between these North and South American societies (as well as the IUBMB); future programs may include a larger, joint scientific conference as well as student exchange programs between U.S. and Brazilian labs. ASBMB and SBBq also hope that other scientific societies in the Americas will join this cooperative effort to create a full and vibrant Pan-American initiative. 

Nick Zagorski (nzagorski@asbmb.org) is a science writer at ASBMB.