Hello everyone,

I am thrilled to report another fantastic annual meeting. Our northern neighbor's reputation for polite and friendly hospitality was certainly met as Toronto provided simply a lovely setting for an invigorating scientific session. More than 1400 people attended the conference, including 70 travel awardees through our growing list of programs committed to the next generation of scientists. We enjoyed a thought provoking, exceptionally high level of plenary presentations that set the table for us to return to our respective institutions, challenged to continue to advance our science. The 60 symposia were well attended and rated highly, and the 900 posters in the evening sessions were packed and invigorating. I was personally very impressed with the level of scientific quality of our meeting; it seems to improve every year. Let's thank Amit Elkin, this year's program director, and Ned Kalin, our outgoing president, for the excellent planning and work they led with our program committee. Ned even pitched in at the last minute to fill a plenary session when a speaker could not make the meeting, and, of course, he did a superlative job.

As a society, at our business meeting we learned that through the excellent leadership of our council and staff, we are financially strong and poised to continue to develop and expand programs, with a particular eye toward mentoring. Our journal Biological Psychiatry continues to climb in impact, now with an Impact Factor >10; kudos to John Krystal (editor) and his staff and editorial board! We are also very excited to launch our new journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging (Cam Carter, editor) to expand our ability to publish neuroimaging and cognitive papers, areas critical to improving our understanding of how brain function impacts behavior in health and disease. Our Council also asked Mary Phillips to lead an effort to increase our diversity by identifying ways to increase our female membership, and female leadership roles, in the society. We additionally remain strongly committed through our educational programming to add youth to the meeting. Clearly this is an exciting time for our society; I hope any of you reading this who are not members will consider joining - there is no better deal in professional societies.

We are now turning our focus to our meeting in Atlanta May 12-14, 2016. Michael Ostacher (this year's Program Director) and I are working with our program committee to once again host a thought-provoking, exiting conference. We are planning to change things up a little, with shorter symposia that allow panel discussion and more audience participation; we are certainly interested in feedback and suggestions of speakers in the areas of innovation, paradigm shifts and improving replication. I hope you are already marking your calendars to attend and I will see you in Atlanta.

Best Wishes,

Steve Strakowski, MD

SOBP President

Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, UC Health

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychology and BME, University of Cincinnati