Dear EPS members
As the newly elected President of the EPS, I am honored to address you in this short message. I am privileged to have been elected as President of the EPS by the national representatives at the General Assembly on May 12th 2023. My term as President started recently, at the General Assembly on May 21st 2024.
The peptide science community is my primary scientific community. As some you will know, I co-chaired the 31st European Peptide Symposium in Copenhagen, September 2010 with Morten Meldal and Thomas Hoeg-Jensen. Since then, I have been on the scientific advisory board on most of the subsequent symposia. I also served in the General Assembly 2014-2022 as the national representative from Denmark. Now I look forward to serving as president of the European Peptide Society for the coming four years.
I thank the immediate predecessor president Norbert Sewald for his immense work for our community as President 2020-24. Norbert has high standards for all his professional work and is always cheerful. I also thank the two other members of the Executive Committee, who completed their terms Secretary Paula Gomes and Communications Officer Krzysztof Rolka for their tireless and impressive work.
I am very fortunate that Fernando Formaggio will continue as Finance Officer and Florine Cavelier as Scientific Affairs Officer. I am glad that Beata Kolesinska will take over as Secretary and Beate Koksch as Communication Officer.
All the chairpersons of the European Peptide Symposia put an immense amount of work and dedication over the years into organizing the European Peptide Symposia. It was a very positive experience to meet colleagues in the peptide community again at the European Peptide Symposium in Sitges (Barcelona), Spain in August 2022. Meritxell Teixido and her colleagues had organized an outstanding conference. It was great to meet again in person after the pandemic. I very much look forward to the 2024 Symposium in Florence (Firenze), Italy co-chaired by Anna Maria Papini and Paolo Rovero.
This is an exciting time to work with peptides! There are many new peptide therapeutics, for example for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, obesity and other diseases. There also continue to be exciting discoveries in the biology of peptides. And new chemistries for synthesizing ever more complex peptides are being developed. A particular focus now is also on more sustainable methods for production of the peptide therapeutics, which are changing the treatment of major diseases. I believe that Morten Meldal’s 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry added even more excitement to our field.
I look forward to serving as President of the European Peptide Society in the coming years.
Knud J. Jensen, June 2024