New Honorary Officers
SEB welcomes two new honorary officers
As Ian Johnston moves into his elected position as SEB President for the next two years, he is replaced as president-elect by Pat Heslop-Harrison. As members may know, the presidency rotates around the three sections and Pat has been elected by the Cell Section into this position after which he will take over as president as Ian steps down. Meanwhile, David Evans retired from his Cell Section Secretary post after 4 years of dedicated commitment to this Section of the Society and will be replaced by Mathis Riehle who has already been serving the Section as its deputy. We welcome them both in their new appointments and look forward to working with them over the next 4 years.
SEB President-Elect
Pat Heslop-Harrison is Professor of Molecular Cytogenetics and Cell Biology at the University of Leicester. As an undergraduate, he spent a year at the University of Massachusetts, before graduating from University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and carrying out his PhD on nuclear organization at the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge. After ten years in Cambridge, he moved to the John Innes Centre in Norwich, before moving to Leicester in 2000. He is also a founder Director of BioAstral Limited, a biotechnology (micro-)company which is commercializing a new hyperspectral photon detection system which will be valuable for quantitative and single cell imaging with multiple probes. Pat's SEB connections go back many years: from his early conference papers, through to being a President's Medallist, member of the Cell Section and Council, and organizing the 50th SEB Symposium in 1995 on the then-new topic of Comparative Genomics. He is an accepting editor for chromosomal, genetic and botanical Journals, council/committee member of the European Cytogenetics Association and the Global Musa Genomics Consortium, and was a member of the Government GM Science Review panel, and is regularly involved in training and advisory roles for the International Atomic Energy Authority/Food and Agricultural Oraganization joint section.
Pat's research focuses on the cell biology of the nucleus, and particularly the large-scale organization - the repetitive DNA components, including retroelements and the genes in the genomic context, and variation and modulation through chromatin structures and methylation. Most work is based around tropical species, and as well as fundamental biology, it has applications in plant and animal breeding, exploitation of biodiversity and the sustainability of agriculture. Further details of his research are given at www.molcyt.com.
In his new role at the SEB, his first involvement was to abolish the ‘Management Committee’ which he was expected to chair, a Committee felt to have outlived its need. The new and focussed Meetings Committee is now looking at how the Annual Meeting should evolve and meet the changing needs of the membership. The maximum input from members about conferences and arrangements that will work well is needed: but the committee won't be recommending meetings consisting only of papers from 'airport-professors' with £400 per day registration.
Cell Section Secretary
Mathis Riehle has been involved with the SEB Cell Section for more than 6 years, as well as being a member of Council, and deputy Cell Section secretary for the last 
three, learning the ropes under the gentle tutelage of David Evans. He first came into contact with the SEB via the Tissue Engineering sessions organised by Alicia El Haj and Adam Curtis and himself organised sessions tied in with his research interests on Cell Mechanics in 2003, and Nanobiology in 2006. He is Director of the Centre for Cell Engineering, at the University of Glasgow, which is an interdisciplinary group of engineers and biologists with considerable expertise in fabricating micro- and nanometric surface features (chemical, topographical or mechanical) and assessing cell responses to these patterned surfaces as well as using these surfaces to interrogate cells. The patterning techniques are extended into the third dimension in order to develop "cell car parks" with specific areas for different cell types. Other interests pursued are to use advanced microscopies to study tree frog adhesions, and analyse the mechanical activity of, and mechanotransduction in cells.