Dear friends,

We are approaching the end of a very challenging year. The US and worldwide financial and economical crisis is shaking the foundations of our entire society. In spite of these challenges, our Foundation in 2011 has achieved remarkable results of which we can all be proud.

I will mention a few.

The Board of Directors has established a new Governance as the basis for future progress and stability of the Foundation.

At the beginning of the year many members of our organization participated actively to the review process of research grants from the Ministry of Health in Italy. We were instrumental to ensure that the distribution of grants was based exclusively on merit. The success of this involvement has been recognized by the Minister of Public Health in Italy. As a consequence, we have recently signed a MOU with the Ministry to continue the review process for the call for grants of this year.

On September 17, 2011 ISSNAF held its Annual Event in the Institute of Physics and Astronomy of the University of California in Los Angeles. The meeting saw the participation of many young Italian investigators from different academic institutions in the US. At the end, we assigned the 2011 ISSNAF Young Investigator Award to Claudia Scarlata (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN) for her presentation entitled “Polarized radiation reveals new aspects of nebulae” and the 2011 Paola Campese Award for Research on Leukemia to Ennio Tasciotti (The Methodist Hospital System, Research Institute, Houston) for his work on “Biological camouflage and its diagnostic and therapeutic implications”.

On November 5th we launched in Houston the Program Young ISSNAF. Young-ISSNAF is the network of “under-40” Italian scientists and scholars, all members and affiliates of ISSNAF. This “network in the network” represents a platform for promoting career opportunities, exchanging experiences and supporting professional growth with the sponsorship of the seniors ISSNAF members. A cornerstone of Young-ISSNAF is its mentorship program. The aim of this program is to guide and support young Italian researchers in their career choices and professional growth not only in USA and Canada but also in view of returning to Italy.

On December 16th we signed a MOU with the Region Marche in Italy to establish a serie of collaborations including fellowships in the area of Biomedical Sciences, Medicine and new technologies.

During this fiscal year our membership has increased by more than 28% and we are currently approaching 1000 members + affiliates.

By the end of this year, the number of chapters will increase from from 2 to 9 (New York, Chicago, Montreal, Chicago, Houston, Miami, San Diego, Seattle, Minneapolis.

I invite our members to become more actively involved in our organization to help us achieving our goals and bringing in our organization those that are still watching on the edge.

I wish to all of you a Merry Christmas and great success for the year 2012.

Your President

Vito M Campese

December, 2011