Minutes of the 2022 Second Virtual FIMSA Council Meeting

2022-06-24Source:FIMSA

The Second FIMSA Council Meeting was held on June 20, 2022 virtually under the Chairmanship of Prof. Sunil K. Arora, President of FIMSA. The meeting was attended by Prof. Bo Huang (Secretary General- FIMSA); Prof. Osamu Takeuchi (Vice-President of FIMSA), Prof. Kiyoshi Takeda (Treasurer-FIMSA) and FIMSA councilors: Dr. Liwei Lu, Dr. Mehrnaz Mesdaghi, Dr. Amit Awasthi; Dr. Nicholas Gascoigne, Dr. Yuzhang Wu, Dr. Kazuyo Moro, Dr. Di Yu. The meeting was co-hosted by Dr. Zhubo Chen and Dr. Jie Yao from FIMSA-secretariat.

Dr. Sunil Arora introduced the main agenda of the meeting: The Biennial Congress of Iranian Society of Immunology will be held hybrid in May 2023, and the Iranian Society sent a request to FIMSA for funding. The FIMSA Council meeting was called to discuss if it is appropriate to support national societies’ congresses, as it has not been a tradition in FIMSA. Dr. Arora explained that FIMSA usually funds the FIMSA advanced courses and congresses, as well as travel grants for students to attend the IUIS training courses and congresses. With the covid-19 situation FIMSA academic activities were mainly held virtually or even cancelled so the FIMSA has some fund reserved for the new activities. 

Dr. Mehrnaz Mesdaghi, the councilor from Iranian Society for Immunology and Allergy, thanked the opportunity. She explained that Iran society mainly asked FIMSA for scientific support, by inviting speakers from FIMSA council to give lectures on line.

Most council members agreed FIMSA may provide scientific support to member society congress, but expressed different opinions on the financial support. Dr. Bo Huang and Dr. Yuzhang Wu agreed that FIMSA may support FIMSA members financially if they have fund difficulties. Dr. Liwei Lu suggested this kind of support should be considered at specific but not on regular bases. Dr. Osamu Takeuchi also thought that to make it a permanent role to support national societies for their congresses was not a good idea. Dr. Amit Awasthi preferred to support joint activities of FIMSA courses and national meetings, and for national congresses alone more details should be considered. Dr. Di Yu agreed with Dr. Amit Awasthi to make FIMSA and IUIS academic meetings priority, since FIMSA’s funds are received from IUIS and FIMSA annually reports to IUIS to explain how the money is spent. Dr. Nicholas Gascoigne was not favor of the proposal because the action asks for more money to fund different societies. Dr. Kazuyo Moro did not fully agree with the idea, and suggested in special cases open call needs for application and selection from member societies if they have new activities. Dr Kiyoshi Takeda informed the FIMSA Council that it will not be possible to transfer funds from Japan bank to Iran due to certain global political restrictions in current scenario.


Dr. Sunil Arora summarized the meeting by concluding that FIMSA would like to support scientifically to Iran society for their national congress, but not financially. However, the FIMSA council may fund any FIMSA related activity if conducted along with member society meetings. Dr. Mehrnaz Mesdaghi thanked FIMSA council for the discussion and mentioned the Iran society would consider organizing FIMSA symposium during the congress. 

At the end of the meeting, Dr. Liwei Lu updated on the preparation of 2022 FIMSA Advanced Course, reporting the program of the course will be soon finalized by Hong Kong Society for Immunology as planned.

The meeting ended with vote of thanks to the chair.