It is a great honour to have been elected as President of the International Society of Differentiation, to serve a two-year term 2010-2012, succeeding Prof Naoto Ueno and a long line of eminent former presidents in this eminent position.

The ISD was founded in 1971 and celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. A number of new activities will be realized in 2012 including a major initiative to revitalize the society journal, increase its impact factor and to return it to its status as an important source of new developments in cell and developmental biology, cancer biology, and most recently stem cells and differentiation. We have a new Editor in chief, Nadia Rosenthal, an eminent and hugely international scientist (with labs in London and Melbourne!) and have created a new position of deputy editor in chief, to which Colin Stewart has been elected. Luckily the flights from London to Melbourne stopover in Singapore so that can only be good for the journal! We now have the extra leverage to attract new authors to submit papers to Differentiation. The journal is our life blood and it is essential for the health and well being of the society that Differentiation flourishes so it is my hope that with the a strong support of members, we will increase its scientific profile and status as the specialist place to publish. We thank Eero Lehtonen, our ex officio editor, for his tireless service to the journal for many years in the face of greatly increasing competition and wish our new editors and their new board much success in the task at hand.

The journal is pivotal to our future success in organizing wonderful international meetings, like the last one in Nara in 2010 organized by Professor Ueno. I hope that I will be able to match his dedication and thoughtfulness in putting together such a great meeting. With the help of an excellent programme committee (Ken Zaret, Jacqueline Deschamps, Solveig Thorsteinsdottir, Elaine Dzierzak and Naoto Ueno) we are already well on our way. We have a great line up of confirmed speakers for you at the 17th International Conference (see elsewhere in the website) and with a city like Amsterdam as the conference site, how could you not want to come! The meeting will be held jointly with the Netherlands Institute of Regenerative Medicine (NIRM) and will not only have contributions from excellent developmental biologists but also from top stem cell biologists looking towards development for clues on how to direct differentiation, and "engineers" trying to create synthetic tissues for organ repair. Hans Clevers, one of the world's most innovative stem cell researchers, will present the Jean Brachet Memorial lecture. We hope you will all be there enjoy it and all the other excellent speakers and social events we will hold in the heart of the city. Encourage your students to come and apply for some of the anniversary travel awards that will be available.

We look forward to seeing you, as well as welcoming our next president, Prof Marianne Bronner to the presidential fold.

Christine Mummery
ISD President