Periodically, Mother Nature seems as if she is angry with us, like when Hurricane Katrina drowned my childhood hometown of New Orleans and nearly 2,000 of its citizens. Sometimes we humans bring destruction down upon each other, like the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And then there was 2020.

Like many of you, as we rang in the new year, I was preoccupied with preparing to teach a large undergraduate class, excited about research projects in various stages of maturation, and worried about making ends meet in the lab. I was also looking forward to serving as President of the GSA, though it was disconcerting that my plans were still vague. A year is a short time in which to start and finish any project. It turns out that it was just as well, because whatever ideas I had about leading a scientific society—whatever plans I had about anything—were soon swept away as the pandemic first crept and then crashed over us all.

Every day brought a new challenge. Final exams hastily thrown online, made optional, or abandoned altogether. Classes and conferences cancelled, labs locked down, precious experiments trashed, school scuttled, learning how to do online learning—we had to reinvent every aspect of our daily lives. We desperately scoured the news, teasing information out of the tangle of misinformation and disinformation. At the very moment we needed each other and hard science the most, we were cut off from each other and our labs. Suddenly it became clear what GSA needed to do.

Never in my lifetime has the value of scientific societies in general, and GSA in particular, been more obvious. We are a community of scientists for scientists. In this relentless year, GSA brought us together during our isolation, fought policies that threatened science and scientists, committed to dismantling racism, welcomed more scientists from lower- and middle-income economy countries, and launched an initiative to help scientists better engage with the public. As the year comes to a close, I would like to note a few of the high points on the rollercoaster ride of 2020.

Our first crisis was that GSA had to cancel our much-anticipated, four-years-in-the-making conference, TAGC. The Board considers TAGC—which brings all our meeting communities together—to be an essential component of our mission. While devastated that we had to cancel, we were determined not to let our communities down, particularly our early career scientists. Somehow, without any precedent or even a model to follow, GSA’s dedicated staff stepped up to the challenge and flipped the conference online in the space of a few weeks. We were the first major society to do so and thereby became a model for others to follow.

GSA decided to make the conference free to attend. Although this resulted in a substantial financial cost to the Society, I consider this not so much a budget setback as money well spent. From a mission standpoint, TAGC Online was a wild success. During that critical time of confusion and isolation, the conference brought us all together. When many of us most needed it, we came away inspired by new research and buoyed by the resilience of our community. We even got up-to-the-minute SARS CoV2 genetics information that you could not find in the news we were all obsessively reading.

Taking TAGC to an online format also quadrupled attendance, reaching scientists around the world. As just one example, only four people from Brazil registered for the in-person meeting, while 898 registered for TAGC Online. We learned there is a deep hunger for knowledge and connection amongst people who cannot typically attend in-person conferences. This understanding will reshape the future of conferences.

The great potential for online conferences was reinforced by the first ever online Molecular Parasitology Meeting. Around a quarter of attendees were able to take advantage of free registration for scientists from countries with lower- and middle-income economies (LMICs). With the help of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, we’re excited to extend free registration to LMIC-based attendees of next year’s fly and worm meetings.

Of course, keeping the scientific world connected is much harder in the face of xenophobic policies. Throughout the year GSA opposed multiple new immigration policies that would have harmed international scientists in the US, and we joined efforts opposing political interference in health policy and research. Thankfully, the combined work of universities and scientific societies like GSA succeeded in getting an executive order reversed that would have deprived US universities of the talent and dedication of many of its international students.

And then, Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Many of us felt jolted awake by a bright light suddenly shining on our collective acceptance of systemic White supremacy throughout this country, within the academic institutions that we have helped to build, and even buried deep within the synaptic connections of our own minds.

Although equity and inclusion were already priorities at GSA, we realized that we needed to do more. We committed to moving faster and more effectively to address racism. We recruited more diverse candidates than ever for our election. The Equity and Inclusion Committee sprang into action and developed a concrete anti-racism action plan. I’m particularly grateful for their work this year, as they also struggled with the consequences of the pandemic, and for the Board of Directors whose thoughtful discussions make everything we do better.

We launched an important program, the Presidential Membership Initiative, the goal of which is to give early career scientists from historically excluded populations access to the benefits of membership in the Society. Through this initiative, we plan to support and develop a thriving new generation of diverse leaders.

2020 has also been marked by a reckoning with the true scale of the gulf between scientists and the public. With so much miscommunication, misunderstanding, and rampant misinformation, we must take a more active role in reaching out. But many of us don’t feel qualified or prepared to launch into discussions about complex and sometimes controversial topics with ethical and social dimensions. This is where scientific societies like GSA are critically important. We are here to help our community learn how to engage in such conversations in an open and inclusive way.

Fortunately we do not have to start from scratch. We’re thrilled to be able to collaborate with pgEd, an organization that has been developing these skills for more than a decade. Together, pgEd and GSA are creating a series of online workshops, free of charge for the GSA community, on public engagement for scientists. We are also planning to raise funds to support public engagement internships and fellowships. Importantly, the program will have a special emphasis on opening discussions with the public to those who have been marginalized, economically disadvantaged, or otherwise excluded from conversations about science.

Another remarkable highlight of this year has been seeing how the grad students and postdocs in our Early Career Leadership Program made lemon meringue pie from the lemons they were handed. Although their carefully laid plans for many TAGC events and workshops were disrupted, they quickly switched to online formats and then expanded their offerings. I’d like to acknowledge these individuals and all the wonderful things they do for our community, including writing articles, publishing interviews, organizing career workshops and seminars, creating a weekly—that’s right, weekly—e-newsletter. They also find time to help the staff and leadership, give us feedback, ideas, suggestions, and occasionally some carefully considered criticisms.

Of course, in the midst of all of this disruption and change, the Society did not stop its regular work! GSA kept publishing research, organizing conferences, holding elections, awarding Society and “travel” awards, training peer reviewers, publishing blog posts, and much more unseen work that is needed to keep the GSA running smoothly and serving our many constituents.

On that note, I strongly encourage you to support GSA in particular and scientific societies in general. There are so many ways you can help. Please encourage your colleagues of all career stages to join! Please volunteer to serve on a committee doing work you are passionate about. You can make a difference in the world. Send us an email at society@genetics-gsa.org if you want to help. Donations to the Society also help us sustain our important programs. Send us suggestions, congratulations, complaints. You are the GSA!

So as we bid farewell (finally!) to 2020, I find myself again preoccupied with figuring out how to teach my large class — this time via Zoom and with far more attention to inclusivity. I am more excited than ever about our research projects in all stages of maturation, and more worried than ever about the lab’s bottom line. More importantly, I worry about the impacts this pandemic year will have on our graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty. I am grateful that science is coming to the rescue in the form of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and COVID treatments. I am grateful that GSA has had a large role to play in keeping us connected and moving nimbly forward. I am hopeful that Mother Nature will be more forgiving this year, and we will be kinder and more just to one another. And so, I wish everyone a happy, healthy, safe, and productive 2021!

As yet another Black man suffocates under a policeman’s knee, cities burn, and the coronavirus spreads a disproportionate burden of suffering and death to communities of color, we are in a moment that calls for action. It would be heartfelt and true for White scientists like me to say to our colleagues and fellow citizens of color that we hear you, we stand with you, and we want to help make things better. But it would not be enough.

We can and should read the many heartbreaking accounts of innocent Black men like LZ Granderson who have been repeatedly traumatized by encounters with police who regularly mistake them for a fugitive criminal. But it is not enough. It is too easy to conclude that this is someone else’s problem, a problem between Black men and police.

We can and should read the eloquent words of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar putting current events in the context of the ubiquitous and inescapable racism that permeates this country. “Racism in America is like dust in the air,” he says. “It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands.”

Acknowledging pervasive racism gets us closer, but it is still not enough. Only when White people understand our own complicity in the system that holds people of color in this country down, can we really begin to change course. I learned this truth by reading the book “White Fragility,” and I urge you to read it too. The author, Robin DiAngelo, opened my mind to an idea that was and still is abhorrent to me: I have come to realize that I, as a White person, was born into privileges that have propelled me upward at someone else’s expense. More cutting still, I have perpetuated racism in this country—albeit unconsciously—by accepting those privileges. Once we truly and deeply understand these facts, it becomes unbearable not to act.

This moment is a call to each one of us to take action against the institutional racism and inequality that are woven into the very fabric of our society. It is not enough to watch and comment from the sidelines as people revolt against the outrageous murder of George Floyd—and so many before him. This is not just a problem caused by racist and overly zealous police officers and their enablers. This is not someone else’s problem. Racism is everyone’s problem.

So what can we do? We can start by listening to our colleagues to uncover the racism in academia that is hiding in plain sight. We can learn what they experience. We can begin every lab meeting with a statement of commitment to a more just and equal lab, society, and world. We can acknowledge painful ongoing events that may be affecting some of us more directly than others. We can educate ourselves about movements for racial justice. I am sure there is much more we can do. I am just a beginning student in this endeavor. But it has become unbearable not to act.

This week the GSA Board of Directors will be discussing what actions the Society should take to confront racism within scientific communities. While acknowledging the historical role genetics and geneticists have played in promoting racist thinking and actions, we hope going forward to provide support for Black scientists and all others affected by racism in science. With the help of the GSA Equity and Inclusion Committee, we will provide an update on our ideas and plans within the next two weeks. In the meantime, we welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: society@genetics-gsa.org.

Read more: GSA’s commitment to dismantling racism in science: building a plan for sustained action

Last week, the GSA Board of Directors cancelled The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), an event we had all been eagerly anticipating. It was a heartbreaking end to four years of work and planning by many people across our community. 

Although painful, the decision was clearly the socially responsible thing to do. The Board voted unanimously to cancel because there was a clear health risk, not only to our attendees but to the broader public. Last Thursday—just four days ago—there were more than 1,600 cases reported in the US and more than 128,000 worldwide. Today, there are more than 3,600 cases reported in the US and more than 175,000 worldwide.

Right now we are focused on working with the community organizing committees to rescue at least some portion of the program using virtual platforms. It will not be the same as holding TAGC in person, but it is our best option under the circumstances.

We are mindful that cancelling a meeting imposes burdens. We took time to evaluate the incoming information and make a considered choice. Many early career scientists were counting on this opportunity to present their work. The huge potential for TAGC to accelerate science and foster new collaborations was at stake. We knew that without TAGC, some of our communities would have to wait 1-2 years for their next community meeting. Some of us had already secured visas, made travel plans, organized childcare, scheduled lab reunions, and planned meetups with friends and colleagues. 

We initially planned to make a decision one month before the meeting was to be held. Unfortunately, the pandemic evolved so rapidly that cancelling the meeting became urgent. The risks vs benefits changed in a flash, so on Friday, we announced the decision to cancel TAGC to our communities and attendees.

Now, just a few days later, many of us are in the difficult position of figuring out how to shut down our research labs. We are suddenly tasked with designing online lab courses. We are trying to work from home while simultaneously caring for children unable to go to school or daycare. We are worrying about setbacks in tenure, grant, and job applications. Not to mention that we’re all worried about the health of colleagues, students, family members and friends—as well as our own health. 

Thoughts about conferences we may or may not have been able to attend are, this week, the least of all our concerns.

We’re fortunate that the GSA community is strong and connected. We can and will help each other. As challenging as the situation is, it is also an opportunity to get creative as we help each other muddle through. We’ve already had a member suggest that we share online genetics teaching strategies on the GSA website. Please get in touch with GSA (society@genetics-gsa.org) if you want to reach our members. Maybe you have a question to ask the community, maybe you have a resource to share, maybe you have a message or some advice. I’d also like to remind those with children now at home that the Conference Childcare Committee has created a “Parents in Science” Slack channel where you can share your ideas. You can join it here.

As we face this uncharted territory together, we urge you to follow the advice of public health authorities to keep yourself and those around you safe. As scientists, we’re in a position to really understand the scope of the situation facing us—and to help the public understand it better, too. Reducing disease spread and the associated burden on our healthcare systems requires us all to be safety- and community-minded. Think of it like pulling off to the side of the road to let the ambulance and fire truck go by. It’s inspiring when everyone pulls together to do the right thing for the community as a whole.

We hope to see you at future conferences when it is once again safe to hold them.

Update, March 25: Stay tuned for an announcement this week about the new virtual format of TAGC 2020 Online!