Leveling up

Education. Advocacy. Diversity. Outreach. Publishing. And more.

Everything the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology does requires member participation and input. If you’re on the outside looking in, that seems pretty obvious, right? The ASBMB is a member-led society, so it makes sense that members are the driving force for all it achieves.

Less obvious is what that engagement feels like and what it means to the people doing the doing. And that’s what we asked the second class of ASBMB fellows, named about this time last year, to think about and write about for this issue.

The fellows program recognizes the many ways members make a difference in our community. The society bestows the honorific, but the truth is these folks leveled up a long time ago. They believed in the cause, and they committed to it. Maybe not all at once. Maybe little by little. But at some point they found themselves all in.

We hope you’ll enjoy their stories of how they became immersed.

The ASBMB and me

Ralph Bradshaw helped take the Journal of Biological Chemistry online, was the first editor of Molecular & Cellular Proteomics and wrote the history of the society’s first 100 years.

People in the ASBMB have changed my life

“I’ve repeatedly had encounters in the society, and especially at the annual meetings, that have had a tremendous impact on my life and my career,” Paul Craig writes.

Saying yes to a community of communicators

Susanna Greer describes her journey to engaging deeply with, and caring about, the society.

Investing in the next generation

“Attending that meeting kicked off my relationship with the ASBMB ... It got me hooked on the excitement of sharing scientific discoveries and networking with colleagues,” Nathan Vanderford writes.

An unpredictable journey

“I am a firm believer in academic science and society publishing and giving back to the scientific community,” Alex Toker writes.