What is the future of BIOPHYSICS?
Answers
Answer:
Biophysics is a bridge between biology and physics. Spanning the distance between the complexity of life and the simplicity of physical laws is the challenge of biophysics. Looking for the patterns in life and analyzing them with math and physics is a powerful way to gain insights.
Biophysics as a discipline has experienced incredible growth in the last 15 years, which is reflected in the growth of the Biophysical Society membership and Annual Meeting. With that growth, an increasing number of disciplines now use biophysical approaches to conduct their research, and elements of biophysics can be found in nearly every aspect of contemporary life sciences.
But biophysics as a field is still not well understood by those who do not identify themselves as biophysics. It is at this juncture that the Society Council undertook a year-long strategic planning effort to ensure that the Society’s activities, programs, and direction continue to best promote the field as a cohesive, unique discipline, and that the Society continues to provide a home and support network for the breadth of current and future biophysicists t o showcase their research and the advancement of the field.
Process: Council hired an outside facilitator to guide the strategic planning process, Marsha Rhea of Signaturei. her organization conducted an internal scan through member surveys and interviews, as well as an environmental scan of factors affecting the field and the researchers conducting biophysical research. Armed with this wealth of data and information, council and other Society members participated in a two-day retreat to draft the Society’s first ever strategic plan, then spent considerable additional time revising the draft, ultimately approving it at their fall meeting on October 2, 2017.
In the end, the new vision positions the Society to take full advantage of the interdisciplinary edge biophysics has as a unifying discipline with powerful quantitative methods that others need and that led to significant new biological discoveries. The goals included in the plan affirm that the Society will work globally to enhance knowledge exchange, advocate for the value of biophysics and support an increasingly diverse net generation of scientists.
In its deliberations, council identified biophysics as a dynamic and evolving discipline within an increasingly interdisciplinary science landscape and determined that the term biophysics does not necessarily need a clear and coherent definition. The Society can exploit the strength of this ambiguity as an advantage with biophysics seen as open to emerging fields of science and a discipline that continues to evolve and define quantitative biology.
Strategically Councilors agreed that it may be better to answer what biophysics is by describing its purpose and scope rather than defining its boundaries. The Society may also find this identity question can be an energizing and exciting discussion to continue when members gather. Councilors talked about how biophysicists are heroes of their own stories of scientific endeavor. Leaders of the field atgree that biophysics and ts quantitative methods are key to unlocking fundamental answers in the life sciences. Continuing to focus this identity conversation on what biophysics is doing rather than what it is may generate more opportunities for the Society to grow and thrive in the future.
Vision: Biophysics is identified and recognized as the interdisciplinary scientific discipline that develops the quantitative methods and techniques needed by scientists as they seek fundamental understanding of the biological, chemical, and physical mechanisms of life and work to unlock answers essential to curing disease, solving biological problems, and discovering basic scientific insights.
Mission: The Biophysical Society convenes and connects global community of scientists working at the interface of the physical and life sciences and creates, shares, and advocates for biophysical knowledge and methods through programs and communities that support biophysicists.
Values:
1 Scientific excellence.
2 Integrity and transparency
3 Diversity and inclusion
4 Community building.
Goals and objectives: Sharing knowledge in and about Biophysics. The Biophysical Society is the organization where one can find the whole breadth of research that is biophysics and not just one small part. While researchers can attend other meetings that have a biophysics track, or join societies that have a biophysics component, nowhere other than the Biophysical Society can they experience the diversity of what biophysics is an what biophysicists do around the world. The Biophysical Society’s meetings, publications, programs, and website will all work together to strengthen the identity of biophysics as a distinct and integrative discipline that underpins a quantitative understanding of biological processes. Together they will provide forums, resources, and opportunities for researchers to access biophysics related research and information.
- Foresting a Global Community
- Supporting the Next Generation
- Advocating for Biophysics
- We are a Member of Organization