Dear Section Members & Friends,

Happy February! Here's our monthly update, including events, opportunities, and resources.

Our first monthly webinar in our series was held on February 1st. We held an incredibly engaging conversation with Dr. Jessica Kendall-Bar.

Here are some highlights from our chat.

Dr. Jessica Kendall-Bar is a scientist AND an artist. She discussed how she uses art to better understand science and described how drawing the pig's anatomy helped her in her anatomy class.

Dr. Kendall-Bar is often asked "what are you going to pick, science or art" because people see the two as a dichotomy. But Jessica is passionate about both and sees them as integrated studies. She "struggles to do science without art" and suggests that "art can help us understand our data and find our story".

A word of advice: "Digital art doesn't require the ability to draw or an innate artistic ability. It requires patience, time, and care. - There is a lot of power in tracing your organism."

Here's some more information about the opportunities she mentioned:

UC Love Data Week
UC Love Data Week is a week-long offering of presentations and workshops focused on data access, management, security, sharing, and preservation
UC Love Data Week workshop schedule: https://uc-love-data-week.github.io/#workshops
Kendall-Bar's workshop: https://uc-love-data-week.github.io/#animationcomm

The other class Kendall-Bar mentioned is a 10-week UC-wide course offered this Spring--please browse the UCSC Course Catalog in March when Spring enrollment opens or keep an eye out for this information in future newsletters

If you missed the live webinar, check it out here!

About Abstract Review

Reviewers will complete their reviews online over a 2-week period (February 28 – March 14). We anticipate assigning 30-40 abstracts to each reviewer, although that number ultimately depends on the number of submissions we receive. We are aiming to recruit enough reviewers to keep the assignment number at the lower end of this range as we did last year. The purpose of peer review is to identify abstracts that should receive further scrutiny from the Program Subcommittee. Reviewers are asked to assess only whether the abstract meets ESA’s guidelines. Feedback from last year’s reviewers suggested most reviewers spent around 5 minutes per abstract on average.

Each abstract will be assigned to several reviewers. The Program Subcommittee will carefully consider reviewer ratings and comments as we make our decisions about which abstracts to accept. Instructions will be sent to each reviewer when the review period begins and will include a link and log in information. The abstracts, review form, and review criteria will all be available by logging in to the system.

Who is Eligible?

Any ESA member is eligible to serve as a reviewer, including students and postdocs. Please ensure that those volunteering to peer review are ESA members. We will avoid assigning a reviewer to any abstracts where they are listed as an author.

How to Volunteer

Reply to this email, contact us on Twitter, or contact any of our section's leadership by Monday, FEBRUARY 13, 2023. Confirm that you will be able to review abstracts during early March and include your full name, institution, and email -- we will pass your information along to the Program Subcommittee.

Cheers,
 

Kelsey E. Fisher, Secretary (@kelsey_e_fisher)
Gina Errico, Social-Media Officer (@ErricoGina)
Kat Beheshti, Chair-Elect (@kathrynbeheshti)
Meghan Zulian, Co-Chair (@meghanzulian)
Katherine Hannibal, Co-Chair (@kathannibal)
Elizabeth Cook, Past Chair (@e_m_cook)