In addition to the Ambassador activities funded through the Ambassador Fund, we will in early 2023 be providing further information on how we are increasing opportunities and benefits for ISME Members. We will continue to support the Ambassadors fund for national activities in microbial ecology and increase the ISME Regional Meetings Fund in order to provide support for regional activities in non-ISME conference years. A number of such activities are currently being planned for 2023 and will be advertised shortly.

We will continue to support the highly successful Unity and Diversity Meeting, also held in non-ISME Conference years and run exclusively by our Early Career Scientist Committee. Also in planning is a fund to provide assistance to members with Article Processing Charges (APCs) for publishing in ISME journals. The Travel Grant Fund to assist early career researchers will be enlarged for ISME19 in Cape Town in August 2024, along with a new Primary Care-Givers Travel Fund to help those with additional responsibilities to attend ISME19.

Finally in the New Year we will be launching an exciting new ISME Scholar Program which will assist visits of ERC members of ISME to foreign labs. Typical activities that ISME will support with this Scholar Program include research training, initiating new collaborative research projects, preparing joint research grant applications, organising and delivering small workshops or training courses in microbial ecology, and initiating the writing of reviews for ISME journals, specifically where a senior group leader in the host laboratory assists and mentors an early career science in the preparation of the review. Stay tuned for more information in early 2023!