Dear lipidomics scientists,
We are fully aware of the diversity issues in science and understand your comments concerning the list of keynote speakers at ILS2021. Therefore, we would like to explain that these keynote speakers were invited in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic urged us to postpone this meeting. Moreover, we suffered from declined invitations and cancellations of leading female lipidomics researchers which finally led to this imbalance. We clearly want to state that imbalance of both the speakers list as well of the board is not based on intention.
To address diversity and inclusivity in our board, two additional members will be elected in our annual meeting on June 18th. (see also our announcement at https://lipidomicssociety.org/2020/09/09/ils-commitment-to-diversity-and-inclusivity-call-for-nominations-to-extend-the-board/). Furthermore, for the selection of the short talks, we will strictly follow our statements which you may also realize in the speaker list of our last online conference https://elm2020.de/program/.
Sincerely,
the Members of the Board of the International Lipidomics Society
