Published on: 20-12-2017
Dear TIAFT members,
Surprise!!! I am writing my last message again.
How lucky I am to write my last message as TIAFT president twice. Yes, this is truly the last one because there won’t be the Hurricane in wintertime and the 5th Joint SOFT-TIAFT meeting and the 55th TIAFT annual meeting is just around the corner. Finally I will pass my presidency to Dr. Marc LeBeau in Boca Raton. Thank you very much for waiting, Marc.
Again I would like to thank the SOFT leaders for their great effort to host the joint meeting. On behalf of all TIAFT members, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to them.
Now I thank you to all TIAFT membership for your great support again. There are so many TIAFT friends I have to thank.
Firstly, I would like to thank all of our annual meeting hosts during my presidency. Elisabetta Bertol hosted the 53rd meeting in the beautiful historic city of Florence and Olaf Drummer hosted the 54th meeting in the bright and cultural city of Brisbane and Ruth Winecker and Dan Anderson will host the 55th meeting in the Sunshine State, Florida.
I also would like to thank the hosts of the regional meetings. In 2015, the first regional meeting of TIAFT in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Central Asia was held in Uzbekistan under the leadership of Mareta Ibragimova. In the same year, the 11th regional TIAFT meeting was successfully hosted in Arequipa, Peru by Wilfredo Cahuana. In 2016, Alicia Evans hosted the first regional meeting of TIAFT with great success in Cape Town. In the fall of 2016, two TIAFT regional meetings were held in just three weeks’ notice. The second TIAFT meeting in Turkey was wonderfully held in Antalya by Serap Annette Akgür and Nebile Daglioglu, while Freddy Arias successfully hosted the 12th Regional TIAFT meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica. In 2017, we had a delightful TIAFT regional meeting in Romania with the Romanian Congress of Legal Medicine. Ana Georgina Gonzalez hosted the 2017 regional meeting in Colombia.
I also would like to thank the chairs of our committees, the former chair Nikolas Lemos and the interim chair, Alain Verstraete of the Internet Committee, Olaf Drummer of the Ethics Committee, Sarah Wille of the Young Scientist Committee for their hard work and dedication.
I would like to thank especially to Gianpaolo Brusini, the TIAFT webmaster for promptly putting all information on the website and managing it beautifully.
My special thanks will go to our Bulletin editors, Sarah Wille, and Jennifer Pilgrim for issuing the bulletin four times a year.
For the mentoring program I would like to thank all mentors for their dedications to TIAFT. It is a great way to communicate between experienced scientists and young scientists. Olaf Drummer joined this year.
I also would like to thank the regional representatives. Their great support makes everything possible. I thank each and every one of you.
Above all, I would like to thank the board members who served with me for the last three years. Without their support and help, I couldn’t have served as a president. I owe them everything.
Lastly, I would like to thank all members and former presidents for your effort and passion for raising TIAFT up to where it is today. Thanks to you, TIAFT became the most precious, influential, and family-like association in the world. I am very much honored to be with you.
On celebrating a festive season, I send you warmest wishes for Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and peaceful 2018. (By lunar year, 2018 is year of the Dog. Happy the year of the dog!!!).
See you twice next year, first in January, in the sunny Florida, USA, and the second in August in historic Ghent, Belgium.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Best wishes,
Dr. Heesun Chung,
President, TIAFT