Dear TERMIS Members,

The election process for the President-Elect of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) has concluded. The final results of the President-Elect Election are as follows.  

Geoff Richards was elected to be the President-Elect. His term as President will begin on January 1, 2019. The term is for three years.

We would like to congratulate Geoff on his new position.

We would also like to thank all of the nominees, who ran into the election. You are all strong supporters of the Society and its mission and we appreciate your continued involvement within TERMIS.

Sincerely,
TERMIS Governing Board

Message from the President-Elect

I am honoured and humbled to have been elected president of TERMIS, by you the membership. I would like to thank you for your trust in me for this important position. I will work with you with honesty, transparency, and respect. I will not take offence from criticism and will use it to improve my work to benefit our society, so please be open with me. I intend to carry out this term of office with full motivation and dedication.

My Goals for TERMIS

All work and ideas below will be brought through the TERMIS governance board and only taken forward when we see improvement for our global Society to help future governing boards, chapter councils and naturally the members themselves.

• I will honour my statement before the election to support the society of TERMIS globally including all chapters for improvement of governance and processes. I wish to bring harmonisation, including more alignment of chapters processes and governance (along with thematic groups). This will need several changes to the bylaws to have them up to date with best practice and for that we the governance board would these changes to you, the members to vote on.
• I would like to develop roles and terms of reference for all positions in the TERMIS governance board including responsibilities such as editorial of the TERMIS web content with the chapter and global members at large – chapters being responsible for chapter information on the web and Global for more global themes such as alignment of thematic groups, SYIS, BPC etc.
• I would like to see the Business Plan Competition (BPC) brought into the governance and highly support this initiative from our younger members. The Industry day was excellent again this world congress and continual support of this area to encourage translation and show successful examples as we saw this year from Tony Weiss is vital for our society.
• I intend to introduce a method for national tissue engineering societies to affiliate to TERMIS chapters (In a similar way to European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (EFORT) or European Society for Biomaterials (ESB) to strengthen TERMIS and connect these national societies in a global home.
• David Williams (past President) and Rui Reis (President) worked on globalization, which still needs more work bringing in India, Russia, Latin America and Africa. Different modes may be required to undertake this work in different geographical and political areas.
• Connected to the two points above, I would like to see continuation and development of chapter guest nations or regions for developing areas and with to work with the TERMIS governance board to develop this idea.
• I think FTERM is a great idea and currently gives public recognition to accomplished TERMIS members as fellows who are role models in the field. I believe though that the FTERM group needs also an active role and I would like to introduce a charter for the fellows with respect to active attendance of TERMIS congresses, participation in FTERM / presidential debates and symposia at our congresses. Naturally after retirement not all fellows can be as active and possibly an emeritus FTERM section could be introduced for this category of FTERM. I would use the International College of Fellows for the International Combined Orthopaedic Research Societies (ICORS), which I set up as template for the first ideas.
• I think the TERMIS Vision needs refreshing and focussing and this will need some work.
• Finally our future, youngsters / Student and Young Investigator Section (SYIS) will certainly get my support and the group empowered.
• I am looking forward to attending all three chapter meetings, each year, during my presidency and am open to help where I can. If you as the members have ideas, issues, concerns with our Society, just contact me. If you wish to remain anonymous, just state that or contact Sarah Wilburn, who can contact me and we will try our best to help.

Finally, thank you to the current and previous global governance boards, the chapter councils and their committees who all volunteer their time for our society without financial compensation for time or travel – true volunteers. Without you and without our active members there would be no TERMIS. Finally thank you to Sarah Wilburn our TERMIS Executive Administrator whom I look forward to working with after having worked close with her for TERMISEU congress last year in Davos.

My background

I was born in Wales (UK) with Scottish ancestry, am married to a Belgian with three young children and we live in Switzerland where I also hold citizenship. I graduated from The University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1987 with a degree in Cell and Immunobiology, in 1991 with a masters in Biological electron microscopy and finally my PhD in 1997 in the subject of cell adhesion. From 1991 I have lived and worked in Davos in Switzerland originally as a PhD student, working my way up to group leader, program leader and director of the AO Research Institute Davos (part of the AO Foundation). The AO Foundation's mission is promoting excellence in patient care and outcomes in trauma and musculoskeletal disorders. With around 100 FTE the institute works to advance patient care through innovative orthopaedic research and development. My work carries me often to US, China and less often to Latin America and other Asian areas along with Europe, so that I have built many international collaborations.

Innovation in Translation: My research work in metal implant interfaces in the trauma area of orthopaedics, translated to major improvements in the design and manufacture of fracture fixation products, not only with Synthes (now Depuy-Synthes from Johnson & Johnson) but also seen in many companies since. The control of tissue interactions through developed surface micro-topographies for prevention of tendon, muscle or nerve adhesion to implant surfaces in trauma has led to vastly improved clinical outcomes in many subspecialty areas.

Innovation in publishing: In 1999 I co-founded eCM journal (with Iolo ap Gwynn and Godfried Roomans), the first online only open access journal in the fields of Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine and Orthopaedics, a pioneer in open access publishing. This concept disrupted the publishing field in science and was part of the push on major publishers to be available with early views online, which is now standard practice.
Innovation in Societies: In 2016 I founded the International College of Fellows for the International Combined Orthopaedic Research Societies (ICORS), where I am a member of the ICORS Board. I developed the charter and the rules for the ICORS constituent members for nomination of fellows to the College. ICORS is an alliance of national societies from around the world which aims to promote basic, translational, and musculoskeletal research worldwide. I also created the list of roles and responsibilities for the College.

Personal Networks: Active member of the Lions service Club Davos-Klosters (since 2005). 2014-2015 President. 2017 onwards member of "Steuerungsgruppe Gesundheitstourismus Graubünden" (steering committee of Graubünden's health tourism, run in local Swiss German). 2013 onwards involved with Nationaler Innovationspark Netzwerkstandort Graubünden (Graubünden's cantonal hub of the Swiss national innovation park)

For publications and other international roles, see http://www.aofoundation.org/ari/Geoff-Richards