I am sure most of you are now aware of the passing away of our Branch President, Dr Tom Acamovic. A full tribute to Tom is included within, but I am sure you will doubtless agree that Tom will be sorely missed at our branch meetings for both his academic contributions and his sense of humour. Tom’s duties are being temporarily fulfilled by Patrick Garland our Branch Vice-President.

There are also major changes with regard to our Annual Branch Meeting to be held from 13th -14th April 2010. This year we will be meeting not only in conjunction with BSAS but also with the Irish Agricultural Research Forum at the completely new venue of Queen’s University, Belfast. More details are available on page 7 of this Newsletter but I would like to draw special attention to changes in the means of submitting articles for presentation at this meeting. Submission of abstracts for oral and/or poster presentation may now only be carried out online. Submissions must be made no later than midnight on 31st October 2009 and no paper submissions will be accepted. Online submission is available through our website.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation with this major change in protocol which will hopefully help our Programme Committee as they try to plan the timetable for our Annual Branch Meeting.

Gordon Memorial Lecture 2009

Professor Peter Biggs is pictured here presenting Professor Richard Jones from the University of Liverpool with his Gordon Memorial Medal for his lecture entitled ‘Viral respiratory diseases : are they ever under control?’