After starting the 2020s with the COVID-19 pandemic, most citizens of Pennsylvania are still adjusting to increasing inflation in most areas. Most industries, common in the past, are still prevalent in the state. Because of the upheaval of the pandemic, there is often now a stronger difference between urban and rural areas. This in turn makes the politics between the two areas starkly different.
Being a leader in cell and gene therapies, the Philadelphia region has seen intense growth due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The University of Pennsylvania, along with the Wistar Institute, are leaders in mRNA technology, leading to the development of vaccines. Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, have continued their status as world leaders in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. The CHIPS and Science acts have strengthened funding for initiatives of the Pennsylvania State University.
If the 1970s in the Pennsylvania Academy of Science could be summed, it would be called the decade of experimentation. During this time, the Academy was searching for alternative ways to do things, such as the format of the Proceedings, the annual lectures, and format of the meetings. The summer meetings, long a tradition of the Academy, ended in 1968 with the move of the Executive Committee meetings to the fall. In 1977, an alternate format of the meetings was tried by having a general session on Friday evening and a poster session. Poster sessions later became regular part of the meetings. Around this same time in 1977, a Special Committee on Affiliates was formed to look at bringing non-academic scientists into the Academy. Another “experiment” was having the 1979 meeting go from Sunday to Tuesday, a departure from the typical Thursday or Friday to Sunday format.
Below are the highlights of the Annual Meetings of the Academy, if they are known.
96th Annual Meeting – 2020 (No meeting?): There was no meeting of PAS due to the COVID-19 epidemic.
97th Annual Meeting – 2021 (Sponsored by York College, by Zoom): The speaker was Dr. Julie Hotopp, of the University of Maryland – Baltimore, who spoke on “Spiderman Syndrome: Bacterial DNA in Animal Genomes.”
98th Annual Meeting – April 9-11, 2022 (Virtual Meeting by Zoom):
99th Annual Meeting – April 17-19, 2023 (Gannon University, Erie, PA):
100th Annual Meeting – April 12-14, 2024 (Messiah University, Mechanicsburg, PA): The speaker was Dr. David B. Olsen, of Merch Research Laboratories, who spoke on “Twists and Turns in Drug Discovery: An Anti-Malarial drug discovery case study that deciphers unique biology and identifies a potent development drug candidate.”
101st Annual Meeting – April 11-13, 2025 (Harrisburg University, Harrisburg, PA): The details on this meeting will come after the meeting.
Go to Chapter 14: History of the Proceedings and Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science