The Vision Sciences Society is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the fifth Davida Teller Award, to be awarded at our 2017 meeting in St. Pete Beach, Florida. The late Davida Teller was an exceptional scientist and a great colleague. The award will be given to a woman vision scientist, who has made exceptional contributions to the field of vision science. A strong history of mentoring will also be given consideration.

Nominations must be made by a member of VSS, and will be reviewed by an Award Committee of three established visual scientists selected from VSS membership. Members of the Award Committee and of the VSS Board of Directors cannot serve as nominators.

Nominations must be submitted by February 6, 2017. The winner will be announced in late March. The recipient will be recognized at the VSS 2017 meeting in St. Pete Beach.

The nominations should include the following: description of the nominee’s scientific contributions and history of mentoring, and a current curriculum vita. The nomination may include supporting letters describing both importance of scientific contributions and mentoring activity. Recipients must have been active VSS members in recent years. Previously considered nominees are eligible to be re-nominated.

Nominations for the Davida Teller Award should be submitted by email to Shauney Wilson at .

As many of you may already know, on Friday our friend and colleague Professor Bosco Tjan died tragically at USC. While we are trying to come to terms with this incomprehensible tragedy, the VSS Board would like to extend its deepest condolences to his wife and son, his students and postdocs, and to his colleagues and friends at USC and in the broader vision community.

We would like to acknowledge his many contributions to the vision community and to VSS in particular. He energized past meetings with his keen intellect and warmth, and he will be sorely missed.

VSS Board

The 2017 ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship Award application is now open through January 31, 2017.

The purpose of the ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship is to encourage and foster new collaborations between clinical and basic vision researchers to better train young scientists in the area of translational research. These fellowships will provide research funds to support students who wish to acquire training in a cross-disciplinary lab to promote their ability to perform translational research and compete for research funding as their career matures.

If you know of ARVO Members-in-Training who may be interested in translational research, please encourage them to apply.

To learn more about eligibility and the general guidelines of the application, please visit: www.arvo.org/ARVO_VSS, and email with any questions.

VSS welcomes applications for satellite events to be held at the 2017 meeting in St. Pete Beach. Satellite events can be workshops, business meetings, social events or ancillary events of interest to VSS attendees, but which are not planned or sponsored directly by VSS. Admission to Satellite Events can either be by invitation to a subset of meeting attendees, or open to all.

To request space for a satellite event at VSS 2017, complete the online VSS 2017 Satellite Events Request Form. Requests will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis as long as space is available.

For complete satellite event information and to complete the online request form, go to Satellite Events.

VSS is seeking interesting visual images to be used for the cover of the 2017 VSS printed program, t-shirts, signage, badges, and tote bags. There will be two separate graphic competitions: T-Shirt Design Competition and Program Cover Competition.

This competition is open-ended in that the images might relate to submitted scientific work, St. Pete Beach and surrounding areas, or VSS. The image could also be an alteration of the VSS Logo.

A $350 award will be given to the winner of each competition.

You must be a current VSS member to submit an image for consideration. Image specifications, instructions on how to submit and previous years’ selected graphics can be found at http://www.visionsciences.org/graphics-competition/ .

The deadline for submitting images is January 12, 2017.

The 17th annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society will be held at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, Florida.

VSS has negotiated special room rates for the TradeWinds Island Grand and Guy Harvey Outpost hotels.
New this year: VSS is pleased to offer a limited number of Government Rate rooms at the Guy Harvey for VSS attendees. Rooms will be available on a first come first-served basis.

Discount rates are available May 15 – 26, 2017. The deadline to reserve a hotel room is April 15, 2017 or until the VSS Room Block is sold out.

For detailed room information and a link to make your reservation, go to Accommodations.

VSS seeks proposals for symposia to be held during the 2017 VSS Annual Meeting, which begins Friday, May 19. Four to six symposia will be scheduled, each lasting two hours.

VSS Symposia deal with contemporary research topics in vision research. Symposia can be organized by content area or by method, but talks within a symposium should focus on broader conceptual themes than a typical VSS presentation. There should be at least four and no more than five speakers within a symposium session, and each talk should be scheduled for between 20 and 30 minutes, including time for discussion. Discussion time can be scheduled after individual talks and/or at the end of the session.

The symposium organizer must be a current (2017) VSS member, but invited speakers need not be members. Complete submission instructions can be found at http://www.visionsciences.org/symposium-submissions/. Submissions should be made online. Symposia will be selected by the VSS Board of Directors on the basis of scientific merit, timeliness, theoretical innovation and/or breadth, methodological innovation and/or diversity, and overlap (less being better) with symposia of last year and with the regular program. Symposia often benefit from a diversity of perspective and institutional affiliations. Proposals from young investigators are particularly encouraged.

The quality of the speakers is important to a symposium, so scheduled speakers may not be substituted, even by coauthors. Organizers agree with their proposal submission, that all speakers are committed to participating in the symposium, and that speakers have not agreed to participate in more than one symposium.

Deadline: November 4, 2016

Decisions will be made by November 18, 2016. Please direct any questions to .