SBIC NewsOn this page you will find the latest news from SBIC. We encourage you to sign up for the quarterly SBIC newsletter to stay up to date with the latest developments in the biological inorganic chemistry community. If you are an SBIC member or have an account on the page and would like to receive the newsletter, click here to opt-in. If you are not a member, but would like to receive the newsletter, please click here to register and sign up. To view past newsletters, click here.
 Dear SBIC members, colleagues, and friends, We are pleased to provide this edition of our newsletter published by the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (SBIC), which aims to keep you up to date with important developments in our society and other opportunities in biological inorganic chemistry. We hope that you will continue to support SBIC or join SBIC as a new member. We would also like to invite you to pass the newsletter on to students and colleagues and if you have news to share in future newsletters, please get in touch. SBIC Elections Outcome The SBIC Membership has elected new SBIC officers, starting their terms October 1, 2025:
After one year as President-elect, John Dawson will serve a two-year term as President (2026 - 2028). Our two new Councilors will serve from 2025 - 2029. We give a sincere thanks to ongoing council members Elzbieta Gumienna-Kontecka (University of Wroclaw, Poland) and Dinorah Gambino (Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay) for their dedicated service to SBIC. SBIC Early Career Awardees at ICBIC
We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 SBIC Early Career Award, Prof. Joseph Cotruvo, of Pennsylvania State University, USA. Prof. Cotruvo earned his A.B. in Chemistry at Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from MIT mentored by Prof. JoAnne Stubbe investigating the mechanism of the biosynthesis of the dimanganese(III)-tyrosyl radical cofactor in ribonucleotide reductase. He was the Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, mentored by Chris Chang. During his postdoc, he discovered that a lipase enzyme involved in the breakdown of fat stores is a copper enzyme. In 2012, Prof. Cotruvo joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at Penn State University, where he established a new program in f-block biochemistry. This represented a new direction for him and also broke new ground in bioinorganic chemistry. Not long after starting at Penn State, the Cotruvo lab discovered an extraordinary homolog of calmodulin ("lanmodulin," LanM) from a lanthanide-utilizing methylotroph that binds trivalent lanthanide ions with high affinity and selectivity. This foundational discovery has spurred new directions in lanthanide biochemistry and biology. Furthermore, his lab has made strides in biotechnology, developing LanM derivatives as luminescent sensors for rare earths and for separations. Prof. Cotruvo rapidly moved up the ranks and was promoted to Professor in 2024. His work has received many accolades, including the Ed Stiefel Lectureship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, and the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry. Look for Prof. Cotruvo's award address at the 2027 ICBIC in York! Warm Congratulations! Educational Resources for SBIC Members We encourage members to visit our educational resources webpage where we have accumulated links to pedagogical information and lectures to aid in teaching inorganic and bioinorganic chemistry. We will continue to add content to this area, and we invite recommendations and submissions. If you are an SBIC member, you also have access to members-only content which is continuously growing. Follow this link! Congratulations The 2026 American Chemical Society Awards were announced and included a number of members of the bioinorganic community:
If you have received an award or know of someone who has received recognition for their work, please email the information to Kara Bren ([email protected]) for inclusion in future newsletters. SBIC Early Career Researchers (ECR) Committee Update The ECR Committee is a Professional Committee of SBIC Council that was established in August 2024 to organize events to promote the development of early career researchers in Biological Inorganic Chemistry. Please check the website for more information: https://www.sbichem.org/early-career. Here we are pleased to share the committee membership and their roles, and encourage Early Career Investigators in SBIC to get in touch with the committee with any questions or suggestions by contacting Co-Chair Matthew Sullivan: [email protected]
Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (JBIC) – Call for Papers!
In Memoriam – Professor Sunney Chan A Legacy of Vision, Science and Humanity Professor Sunney Chan (1936-2025) born in San Francisco, USA, earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. He joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology in
1963 and became the George Grant Hoag Professor of Biophysical Chemistry in 1992. In 1997, he relocated to Taiwan, where his visionary leadership as Director of the Institute of Chemistry and Vice President of Academia Sinica (1999-2003) helped elevate Taiwan’s scientific community on the global stage. In recognition of his lifelong dedication and pioneering research, he received the 2021 Taiwan Presidential Science Prize. A pioneer in biological inorganic chemistry, Professor Chan’s research spanned the intricate worlds of membrane-bound metalloproteins and bioinorganic catalysts. His studies on cytochrome c oxidase (CcO) in mitochondria unraveled the mysteries of this essential enzyme, using advanced spectroscopic and biochemical techniques to illuminate its structure and function. These discoveries have had a profound impact on our understanding of cellular respiration and energy conversion. In the 1990s, Professor Chan turned his attention to one of chemistry’s grand challenges: the catalytic conversion of methane to methanol. His work on particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO) in methanotrophs led to the groundbreaking discovery of a tri-copper cluster responsible for this catalytic activity. Inspired by nature’s solutions, his team designed a biomimetic molecular catalyst capable of converting methane to methanol under ambient conditions—an achievement that stands as a testimony to his creativity and determination. Professor Chan’s enduring legacy is not only found in the pages of scientific journals but also in the minds and hearts of the students, colleagues, and friends he mentored throughout his eminent career. -Contributed by Sheng-Fa Yu For your diary: Upcoming conferences
Please contact us if you are running a conference, symposium, or workshop to include in future Newsletters. Call for applications for conference support SBIC financially supports international meetings on subjects related to Biological Inorganic Chemistry organized by members of our society. At many of these conferences, SBIC members will pay discounted registration fees and students and early career members may be eligible for travel awards. To be eligible for conference support, the conference organizers need to be SBIC members and apply by contacting SBIC Treasurer Janet Morrow. Please include a detailed conference program. Diversity in gender, age, race, ethnicity, geography, and research topics covering a broad range of biological inorganic chemistry is a prerequisite to obtain SBIC funding. Adequate representation from underrepresented groups, including women for Plenary and Keynote lectures, in particular, and the program, in general, must be demonstrated. A maximum of 2,000 USD for conferences or 3,000 USD for student workshops will be granted to non-BIC conferences. All SBIC financial support is exclusively given out as SBIC travel bursaries to be awarded to early-career researchers (PhD students and postdocs) who are SBIC members, and the financial support by SBIC must be acknowledged. For ICBIC, AsBIC, EuroBIC and LABIC, special funding rules apply. Please contact the SBIC Treasurer Janet Morrow for details. National meetings and those organized by national chemical societies are not eligible for SBIC support, including Pacifichem Symposia. TARGET DATES for applications: March 1 and October 1 each year. Stay in touch with SBIC: Follow us on our Social Media channels! Prof. Abhishek Dey, IACS, Kolkata is managing the SBIC social media presence. Suggested contributions may be directed to him at [email protected] or to SBIC Secretary Kara Bren at [email protected] You have been included in this mailing list as a current member of the society or because you have attended a conference of the BIC series (ICBIC, EuroBIC, AsBIC, LABIC). If you would prefer not to receive this information, please let us know and we will remove your email address from the distribution list. If you would like to receive the latest SBIC news on your social media feeds, like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/officialSBIC/, or follow us on “X” (formerly Twitter) https://twitter.com/sbicofficial/. If you would like to advertise your events or anything biological inorganic chemistry-related, please email Kara Bren with all the relevant information.
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