The AUA has had another successful year, and on behalf of the AUA council I would like to express sincere gratitude to Jeanine Wiener-Kronish for her effective and inspiring leadership as AUA president over the last two years. Indeed, Jeanine has had a hand in many of our strategic initiatives, and has contributed substantially to the AUA’s recent accomplishments, including our recent meeting in Chicago.

The EAB has been quite fortunate to have Dr. Bob Gaiser as its Chair for the past four years. He has led the EAB with its charge to plan the education program for the Association’s Annual Meeting. In addition, he has arranged to have education-related topics in each of the Association’s Newsletters. We are indebted to his commitment and superb leadership over these past four years.

Leaders of academic anesthesiology organizations have recognized that there is a need to conduct large pragmatic trials in order to answer important questions in anesthesiology-related research. Although there are several successful anesthesiology clinical trial networks around the world, there is no collaborative network in the United States. There are several factors that enable anesthesiology researchers today to conduct large and efficient trials, in line with recommendations of the National Institutes of Health.

The AUA Annual Meeting occurred on April 26 and 27 in Chicago. The Education Advisory Board presented two panels: “Motivation, Meta-cognition, and Self-Regulation” and “The Science of Longitudinal Assessment.”

The 65^th AUA Annual Meeting was recently held in Chicago, IL. For the third year, we celebrated the successful alignment of the AUA and the IARS in furthering the science of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine by holding a joint AUA-IARS symposium. This year, the topic was “Mitochondria and Bioenergetics in Health and Disease: It’s Not Just a Power Failure”.

The Host Program II of the AUA 2018 Annual Meeting, hosted by the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and The University of Chicago School of Medicine, and organized by Drs. Jeffrey L Apfelbaum, Peter Nagele, and Charles W Hogue, had three terrific speakers with captivating presentations showcasing the depth and diversity of research efforts at both institutions.

The 2018 joint AUA/IARS/SOCCA meeting featured the third annual Scholars’ Program, a full-day series of sessions directly targeted to the needs of early-career scientists in anesthesiology at any stage, from medical students through junior faculty. Registration for this program nearly doubled the numbers registered for last year’s program, with 170 Scholars and senior faculty registered for this third annual Scholars’ Program.

2018 saw a total of 291 abstracts submitted (>80% increase from 2017 of 159 abstracts). As in previous years, 16 oral presentations including 3 resident travel (including Margaret Wood resident research award) and 4 junior faculty awards (including 2 new awards by Y S Prakash) were given at the meeting. 76 abstracts were eligible for resident travel award (200% increase from 2017), 81 abstracts were eligible for junior travel award (55% increase from 2017).

If you have an idea for an article, an announcement, or an opinion on a recently published article, please submit your proposal/article to Dr. Lisa Wise-Faberowski, MD, lwf1212@stanford.edu before Monday, August 27, 2018. If your article is selected for the Summer Issue of Update 2018, we will contact you for editing and formatting!

The AUA call for member nominations is now open. We have a new online nomination form and nominations are only accepted online. Please submit candidates by September 15.

The Educational Advisory Board (EAB) is looking for four (4) new members to join its Committee, which is composed of 11 members plus the Chair.

The Communications and Website Committee is looking for one (1) new member to join its Committee which is composed of 11 members plus the Newsletter Editor.