Science - USA (2022-01-21)

DearColleague,

On behalf of our colleagues on the AAAS Board of Directors, and the entire leadership and staffof AAAS,

we wish you a happy, productive, and, above all, healthy new year.

As always, it is a busy time of year for AAAS, with the next six weeks focused on bringing you the thought

provoking and valuable scientic sessions, workshops, networking opportunities, and more at the AAAS

Annual Meeting in February. Throughout our planning, we have been closely monitoring the developments

in the pandemic and, while we were once quite optimistic about the prospects of gathering safely in-person,

the conditions of the past several weeks have required us to reevaluate. As such, we have made the dicult

decision to forego the in-person component of the AAAS Annual Meeting in Philadelphia and convert to an

entirely virtual convening.

This is certainly not the path we would have liked. For those of you who were planning to join us in Philadelphia,

we were excited to once again experience the camaraderie that can only come from being together. However,

the health and safety of our attendees and staffis our top priority, and, under the decision-making framework

that we established at the beginning of the pandemic, we could not reasonably guarantee that health and safety

in a way that did not compromise the continuity of operations for a successful in-person meeting.

We will be in touch soon with more detailed information, including refunds for in-person registrations. In the

meantime, we ask that you hold onto any specic questions you might have until our teams cannalize the

many details involved in this transition.

Advance (discounted) registration for the virtual meeting is available through January 24. We hope you will

join us for the compelling content and powerful professional development in our new-and-improved virtual

meeting space, February 17-20. The virtual platform, including Scientic Session Spotlight Videos, will be

available beginning in late January.

We are grateful to our partners in Philadelphia—including and especially Drexel University, our ocial Host

University—who have been wonderful during the multi-year planning process for this meeting. We look

forward to featuring many unique and exciting elements of Philadelphia in our virtual space, and thank

the entire community for their support.

We hope that each of you stays safe and healthy during these times, and we look forward to seeing you

online in the weeks ahead.

Sincerely,

2 AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE | aaas.org/meetings

Susan G. Amara, Ph.D.

President, AAAS

Chair, 2022 Annual Meeting

Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D.

Chief Executive Ocer, AAAS

Executive Publisher,ScienceJournals

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