Dear IBBS members,
We are pleased to announce that the torch of the IBBS Presidency was transferred during the recently completed and very successful CVB 2025 meeting in Ann Arbor, with the result represented in the following new Executive Leadership structure for the Society:
Britta Engelhardt, President; Robert Thorne, Past President; Elga de Vries, President Emeritus; Les Drewes, President Emeritus
We conferred IBBS sponsored awards to several junior investigators at the meeting (Joseph Amick, Harvard; Teresa Faupel, University of Lübeck) and Celine Titus (University of Toronto) won the Danica Stanimirovic Memorial Award (Celine actually won this award for the 2nd time!).
Note from Britta – Robert was thanked at the meeting by everybody for his active and highly committed leadership and work for IBBS that kept our community vivid and connected during his presidency. We both cherished our collaboration during the last two years that required many in depth discussions on how to best support the field and keep our spirit alive. We look back to a trusting collaboration and look forward to more enduring work together!
I am now dedicated to continue with a dedicated focus on maintaining the welcoming family spirit of our brain barriers community that is dedicated to find the truth and thus cherishes open discussions with the overall goal to advance our field. While honoring the legacy of our past members, I will also stive to support the careers of young researchers.
During the next weeks Robert and I will still work tightly together to finalize the transition by conducting the voting among the Steering Council for a new Vice President (President-elect). We will also seek to add several new members to the Steering Council through voting that will involve all Society members – if you are interested to join the Steering Council, please do reach out to me.
I am honored to start my role as IBBS president and I am fully committed to keeping this a vivid community that brings brain barriers research to high levels of excellence and meaningful advancements in the years to come!
Note from Robert – What more can I say? Serving as the 3rd President of the IBBS for the past two and a half years has been one of the highlights of my scientific career. I look back on this recent period and believe we all made excellent progress together as a Society, successfully rebooting our existing conferences following the pandemic and initiating the new ‘Drug Delivery to the Brain’ Keystone Symposium, which is now stable and part of the regular Keystone portfolio. I believe that the future looks exceptionally bright for our scientific community and for our Society. I am excited to see what the coming years have in store for all of us!
I would like to sincerely thank Britta for her unwavering support and tireless enthusiasm as we worked together over the past several years to recognize the scientific excellence of so many junior people in our field through the IBBS awards, to honor our dear departed colleagues and close friends from the field who recently passed away (Joan Abbott, d. 2025; David Begley, d. 2023; Bill Pardridge, d. 2024; Jean-Michel Scherrmann, d. 2023; Maria Spatz, d. 2024; Dana Stanimirovic, d. 2024), and to advocate for the compelling work and worthy scientific questions that our field continues to deliver. Finally, I am filled with gratitude for all our members who have supported us along this journey! I cannot thank you enough!
Sincerely,
Britta Engelhardt, Dr. rer. physiol., Theodor Kocher Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland (IBBS President) & Robert Thorne, PhD, Denali Therapeutics & the University of Minnesota (IBBS Past President)