ISBER 2026 Board and Award Nominations Open!

Dear ISBER members,

 Nominations for 2026 are OPEN!  ISBER would like to have your input on 2026 Board candidates and Award recipients.

ISBER welcomes nominations for the following Board positions:

• President-Elect
• Secretary
• Director-at-Large: Americas (DAL AMER)
• Director-at-Large: Indo-Pacific Rim (DAL IPR)

Only ISBER members are eligible to submit nominations for the ISBER Board of Directors. To learn more about the office description for each role and to submit your nominations, please visit: www.isber.org/2026BoardNominations

ISBER welcome nominations for the following Awards:

• Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award: The ISBER Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award is designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding, indisputable contributions to the field of biobanking. The award can be given for a single outstanding achievement or a life-time body of outstanding work in the field.  Criteria to be considered include the nature, significance, and impact on the field of the outstanding achievement(s). The awardee being recognized should have made seminal, intellectual contributions that have had a wide-spread impact on the field of Biobanking. Their contributions may include: advancing the science of biobanking, creating depth of knowledge, demonstrating world-class expertise, making remarkable discoveries, bringing the field into further prominence. The recipient is not required to be an ISBER member.
  
  
• Leadership Award: The ISBER Leadership Award is designed to honor ISBER members who have demonstrated exceptional leadership to further the mission and goals of the society and/or significant, long-standing contributions to the society. ISBER will recognize contributors who have played critical roles in developing and executing ISBER's vision and mission. Examples of ways an individual may have demonstrated exceptional leadership include: Advanced the ISBER mission, vision, and goals through the development of a key project/initiative; Has a history of longstanding meaningful contributions; Drove meaningful change that improved the association. Throughout their tenure with the association and in particular as the task was being completed, the individual demonstrated: excellence, integrity, and performance beyond expectations for the benefit of ISBER. The recipient must be an ISBER member.
  
  
• NEW: Resilience in Biobanking Award: ISBER's new Resilience in Biobanking Award is designed to recognize a Repository Professional or Repository that is overcoming challenges and other logistical barriers to establish or expand a repository/collection; or to advance repository science as an evolving, essential discipline. Challenges may present themselves in the form of infrastructure, topic domain, legal or institutional constraints, cultural norms, and similar.  This recipient is a visionary, committed to facing these matters with a clear focus and functional plan. The impact of awardees work will benefit the broader community through the downstream advances resulted from the collection or repository sciences. The recipient may be an individual or a repository. The recipient is not required to be an ISBER member. Self-nominations are welcome.

Only ISBER members may submit a nomination for the Outstanding Achievement in Biobanking Award and Leadership Award. Member and non-members are invited to submit a nomination for the Resilience in Biobanking Award. To learn more about the awards, past recipients, and to submit your nomination, please visit: https://www.isber.org/2026AwardNominations

DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS:

• 8:59pm North America Pacific Time on October 30, 2025
• 10:59pm North America Central Time on October 30, 2025
• 11:59pm North America Eastern Time on October 30, 2025
• 4:59am Greenwich Mean Time on October 31, 2025
• 5:59am Central European Time on October 31, 2025
• 12:59pm China Standard Time on October 31, 2025

If you have any questions, please contact the ISBER Head Office at info@isber.org.