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2020 Council Meeting
GoToMeeting Virtual Meeting
July 13th, 3 PM EDT

 

The 2020 AMLI Council meeting was called to order at 3:00 PM on July 13th, 2020.

Updates on the virtual meeting – Jeff Rossio and Maggie Fogel
Jeff Rossio provided an update on the progress and plans for the virtual meeting. All speakers and chairs have been confirmed. The meeting will be held on a distributed schedule, which is available on the website. Everyone who is registered for the meeting will get an email two weeks before the meeting with instructions for logging on. Each person will have a unique log in, with presenters and session chairs receiving one that will give them more privileges. Practice session will he held with the chairs and speakers for each session. Each speaker will give their presentation from their own computer, wherever they are. All of the talks will be recorded and will be available after about 72 hours on the website. Presentations will only be accessible to those who registered for the session. When a participant logs on to the meeting, they will be asked if they are interested in CME credits, and if so, will be emailed a form to fill out. At the end of each session, participants will be asked to complete a survey to provide their feedback on the session. If they don’t fill out that survey, they will be sent the survey at a later date.

Maggie Fogel provided an update on meeting registrations received thus far. Currently there are around 100, but that includes exhibitors, speakers and exhibitor guests. However, with a month left before the meeting begins the frequency of registrations is beginning to increase and we typically receive a lot of registrations right before the meeting begins.

The council unanimously approved the 2019 Council Meeting minutes (only partial minutes available since recording of meeting was inadvertently destroyed).

 

AMLI Council and Committee Reports

President’s report – Qasim Ansari, President
Congratulations to the scientific affairs committee on putting together an excellent meeting for 2019 in spite of these trying times and what hopefully is a once in a lifetime experience where we cannot meet, shake hands and converse with each other without masks on, and where we cannot have our annual meeting face-to-face.

Secretary’s report – Lisa Peterson
The association has a total of 65 members to date. This number is likely low, since many people become members or renew their memberships right around the time of the annual meeting.

Since there is a month until the meeting begins, we hope to receive more membership renewals and applications. Suggestions or ideas on how to increase membership numbers during this challenging time were requested. AMLI currently has applications from 4 new members which have been shared with the council for review.

Treasurer’s report – Melissa Snyder
At the end of December 2019, AMLI had $90,834 in the checking account. As of May 31, 2020, this is up a bit, just shy of $104,000. Income from the 2019 meeting was a little bit lower than 2018, but not quite as low as 2017. Corporate dues were a bit higher in 2019 compared to 2018, and the bank interest is much higher in 2019 after switching banks. Overall income (meeting + non-meeting) was also down a little bit from 2018. Expenses were down compared to the meetings in 2018 and 2017 due to decreases in printing and shipping of meeting materials, speaker expenses, catering expenses and not using busses to transport attendees to the annual dinner. For 2020, not a lot has been happening because with the virtual meeting many of the expenses that would be coming in are not. There are some questions about how to handle some of the expenses, but this will probably have to be figured out at the end of the year. As far as income, AMLI has collected some exhibitor fees and registrations. However, a few exhibitors have asked for a refund. Additional exhibitor or additional registrations should be coming in. For non-meeting income, things are down a bit, but hopefully as the year progresses, more membership dues will be collected, and our bank account is earning a decent interest rate. Meeting expenses are expected to decrease due to the meeting being held virtually this year. Credit card processing fees are down significantly due to the switch to a new company. Based on discussion at the 2019 council meeting, assets have been transferred to a checking account at a new bank. The council discussed whether it would make sense to transfer some funds to a savings account, or even possibly a CD, with the decision to follow up on this at the next council meeting.

Qasim Ansari acknowledged and thanked Maggie, Jeff and Wayne for their negotiations with the hotel to defer the reservation and the associated expenses to 2021.

The council then discussed how to use the points awarded on the AMLI credit card, deciding to cash in those about to expire for money to be transferred to the bank account.

Membership Committee –Lisa Peterson, Chair
Refer to information provided during the Secretary’s report.

Scientific Affairs Committee –Qasim Ansari, Chair
We have an excellent slate of speakers for the 2020 virtual meeting. Jeff will hold practice sessions with the speakers and chairs of each of the sessions. Overall, we are in good shape.

Finance Committee –Melissa Snyder, Chair
Refer to information provided during the Treasurer’s report. Plan to recruit additional members to the committee was mentioned.

Nominating Committee –Tony Bakke, Chair
The council discussed upcoming openings for two councilor positions, current nominees and possibility of asking for self-nominations to fill these positions. Suggestion was made to change the bylaws to increase the number of members on this committee.

Education Committee – Sara Nandiwada, ChairThe Education Committee has been working on two projects. One is to increase the educational materials available on the website, and the second is to create a listserv to increase communication between AMLI members throughout the year. Significant progress has been made on both projects but implementation has been delayed due to the need to divert technical resources to the virtual meeting format.

CME Committee Chair – Tony Bakke
ASCP and ASCLS applications have been submitted and both organizations were happy with the virtual format but want to have a record of attendance. Jeff is determining how we can record virtual attendance.

Website Committee – Jeff Rossio, Chair
AMLI website has been transferred to the new platform which makes editing and updating the website easier. Implementation of the additional content discussed in the Education Committee report has been delayed but will proceed after the virtual meeting.

Exhibitor Committee – Maggie Fogel
Exhibitor support is down a bit likely associated with the pandemic and virtual format of the meeting. However, several exhibitors have declared their desire to support AMLI and to return in the future. In the virtual meeting format, there are eight spots available for exhibitor presentations and many of these have already been filled.

Abstract review committee for 2020 – Svetlana Dambaeva, Wayne Hogrefe, Harry E. Prince, Ron Harbeck, Colleen Lewis
Abstracts are still under review and the awards will be decided in time for the meeting. It was mentioned that the quality of abstracts has improved compared to previous years.

 

Old Business

Educational activities –  Jeff Rossio
Lectures from previous AMLI meeting are posted on the website. Abstracts from the current meeting will be posted soon.

AMLI liaison member to CAP’s DIRC committee – Vijaya Knight
The societies are discussing collaborative projects to create educational material on primary immunodeficiency. With an emphasis on sharing this knowledge with clinicians, and conveying that it really has to be a partnership for these patients with complex immune problems.

2020 Awards – Maggie Fogel
Neter Award – Thomas Alexander, PhD
Doctorate, Young Investigator Award, Laboratory Scientist, Travel and Distinguished Service awardees are still to be determined.

Education/Communication Committee – Sara Nandiwada
Refer to information provided during the Education Committee report.

Update on the CLSI H62 document – Tony Bakke
The CLSI document outlining best practices for validation of flow cytometry assays is finally completed. There were a record number of comments (>700), so editing took a long time. Comments came from every part of the field – pharma, research and clinical. It should be published before the end of the year.

 

New Business

ABB and collaboration with AMLI – Vijaya Knight
ABB requested AMLI diplomates participate in writers’ workshops. In the first round we had between 3 and 5 people participate. ABB was a little concerned about the ASCP collaboration for an Immunology board exam but we assured them that both collaborations can happen in parallel and that ASCP is still a little bit down the road. ABB is currently the only route for new trainees to certify as the director of a high complexity laboratory with specialization and immunology.

Review of bylaws including suggested changes – Vijaya Knight
It was noted that some AMLI officers serve on multiple committees. The council discussed which council members are on which committees and if it might be beneficial to change the bylaws with regard to term length and composition of the committees. The discussion included the relevance/necessity of certain committees including recent levels of activity and contribution of those committees.

Journal of Immunological Methods – Amir Sadighi Akha
Amir presented several options to enhance collaboration between AMLI and the Journal of Immunological Methods (JIM). The council discussed that having the chairs of each session write a summary of their session which would be published in JIM is a good starting point for increasing AMLI’s presence in JIM with the possibility of creating special issues and/or inviting AMLI meeting presenter’s with abstracts or talks deemed worthy of expansion into a full manuscript to do so in an AMLI associate issue of JIM. The possibility of JIM sponsoring awards or lectures at upcoming AMLI meetings.

Review of committees:

  • Exhibitor Committee: (Gerry Miller, Barbara Detrick, Maurice O’Gorman, John Schmitz) – The council discussed defining/revising the goals for this committee and the possibility of reaching out to the entire email list for suggestions of new companies to approach to increase the number of exhibitors for future meetings.
  • Membership Committee (nine people): The council discussed decreasing the number of people on this committee. The council unanimously approved four new member applications.

2021 AMLI meeting site: Austin, Texas, August 12-16, 2021.

The council discussed having quarterly council meetings in the future.

Adjournment